The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.
Schutz's Approach
Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.
Works in the First Gallery
These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work features a person given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.
An Embrace by the artist.
Shift in Focus
In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.
Inspirations and References
This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in references. 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 Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.
The Example by the exhibitor.
Meaning and Stories
Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.
The 2017 Scandal
And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, 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 profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the work each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.
Aftermath and Recent Art
This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.
