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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing 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 artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work presents a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements 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 (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.