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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another presents a person given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know 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 a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting daily, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, 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 emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.