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The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another presents a figure given a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures 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 other works a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death 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 scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.