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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy 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 daily, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting 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 people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.