🔗 Share this article

The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work presents a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, 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 pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical 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 narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, 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 a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline 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. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified 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

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