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The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another presents a figure given a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.