🔗 Share this article

The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, 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

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants 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 hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.