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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss 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 masses that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting 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, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. 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 biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.