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The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading 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. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, 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 (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.