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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work features a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in other works a pair console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.