About Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel (1951) is an American artist, filmmaker, photographer, musician, and writer. In the eighties he broke through as a painter within neo-expressionism, a movement to which Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Salle also belonged. In his paintings from this period, Schnabel used an underlay of broken crockery in his Plate Paintings. As a result, he combined found and useless objects from American neo-Dadaism with his expressionist style of painting. Due to the whimsical forms of the support base, which are shaped by the edges of the broken crockery, the paintings appear fragmented. Brush strokes cannot flow smoothly because they bounce off the edge of such boards. After the crockery, Schnabel used various other materials, including velvet and buffalo leather.

In the 1980s, Schnabel began to design his first sculptures in bronze. It is remarkable that from that moment on, he started painting more on the surface instead of his previous reliefs. He also used various found objects in his sculptures. In Galileo’s Table (1989), which will be exhibited at ARTZUID, casts of vases can be seen. The table is seen by Schnabel as a starting point from which more things can be added. The table has in common with sculpture that it is an object that needs space. On the table stands a bronze replica of a wooden statue from Oceania. To Schnabel these objects were once full of mystical value, but they have now been reduced to main-stream souvenirs purchasable at airports.

With his highly abstracted sculptures Napoleon from 1991 and Napoleon the 2nd from 2002, Schnabel seems to be returning to the visual language of one of his earliest sculptures, Head on a stick from 1983. After 1991, Schnabel stopped creating sculptures for a few years to reflect upon his work which he resumed in 1999.

In addition to his visual artistry, Schnabel is also an established name in the film industry. He directed, among other things, the filmed artist biographies At Eternity’s Gate, about Vincent van Gogh and Basquiat.