BOOK: Julian Schnabel-Taschen Publications

Painter, printmaker, sculptor, and filmmaker Julian Schnabel, is one of a number of international painters, including David Salle, Georg Baselitz and Francesco Clemente, to emerge in the late 1970s whose bold expressive style was termed Neo-Expressionist. He became an instant art-world success when he was marketed by the young New York dealer Mary Boon. This monograph by Taschen Publications features Julian Schnabel’s work in all media: huge paintings with everyday materials, sculptures that transpose pictorial forms into space, movies that paint portraits of unconventional heroes. Julian Schnabel makes art out of life, finding his materials in the fabric of the everyday. He uses broken plates as an improbable picture ground; he paints on velvet, market stall covers, army tarps, kabuki theater backdrops, and boxing ring floors, found surfaces that lend their own rich history to the artist’s exploration. A figurehead for the return of painting after his overnight success with a first New York solo show in 1979, he has since worked in a wide variety of media: making sculptures that transpose his pictorial forms into space as raw, seemingly time-worn artifacts; directing award-winning movies that paint portraits of artists and other subtly heroic figures; and even building his own dream of a Venetian palace in New York. “I want my life to be in my work, crushed into my painting like a pressed car. If it’s not, my work is just some stuff,” Schnabel has said, and this urgency permeates his oeuvre no matter what means or media the artist chooses. –Efi Michalarou