The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.
Schutz's Approach
Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.
Initial Exhibition Pieces
These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another presents a figure given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.
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 masses 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 couple console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.
Inspirations and References
This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.
The Example by the exhibitor.
Interpretation and Narratives
Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.
Controversy and Impact
And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.
Legacy and Current Work
It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.
