The American painter smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.
Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.
The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another features a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of 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 crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.
The Kiss by the artist.
In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.
This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.
The Example by the exhibitor.
Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.
And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.
It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience 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.
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