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The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work features a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since 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 continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.