Schnabel’s tactile, elemental approach to painting—one that embraces the uncertainty of physical expression—has become a defining hallmark of neo-expressionism.
Photography by Sean Thomas
Sarah Medford interviews Julian Schnabel for the Sotheby's Magazine.
Medford writes, "Now 73, he became prominent in his mid-20s with paintings that welcomed certain roped-off aspects of art-making back into the club; among them gesture, touch, bodies, history and romance. The novelty of these subjects in late 1970s art didn’t prepare viewers for what came next: paintings on cracked plates, paintings on distended velvet, paintings on cowhide or sails or tarps drenched in pond green, inky purple or a wan, boiled egg-yolk color that Schnabel identifies as Naples yellow—all of which still deliver a jolt and induce collectors to reach for their Apple wallets.
This fall, Schnabel’s wide-ranging work is being reassessed alongside that of more than 20 other artists in 'Downtown/Uptown: New York in the Eighties,' organized by Mary Boone in collaboration with Lévy Gorvy Dayan gallery in New York. Mnuchin Gallery is planning a survey of his plate paintings and Chateau La Coste, Paddy McKillen’s art center and vineyard in the south of France, has a show scheduled for next summer. Its curator is Donatien Grau, head of contemporary programs at Musée du Louvre, Paris. Grau explains that the eight monumental paintings to be installed in a former wine-storage vault will be just a taste of the whole: 'Julian’s work, like his person, his way of inhabiting the world, is very vast. It takes different forms—it consistently invents itself.'"