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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another presents a person receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public 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 young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.