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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work features a person given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David 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. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men 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 own gain. A protester picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.