🔗 Share this article

The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another presents a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.