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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another features a person given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and some called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.