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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work features a figure receiving a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, 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 a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset 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 now exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.