Book Description
People have asked me, as a painter, how do I do it? There's no separation really, between life and art for me. That can sound like a pretentious thing, but what's the fucking difference? Art, that's what I do, and I use everything, consciously or unconsciously. --Julian Schnabel Observers of contemporary art associate the name Julian Schnabel with highly evocative, large-scale paintings. At the time of his early exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe in the 80s, the larger-than-life Schnabel was loudly hailed as a new milestone in the development of painting, the savior of an art form declared dead years before. Still painting some of the most massive canvases around, Schnabel is a virtually unrivalled master in the use of "bigness" and a broad range of materials. Fragmentation and overlapping play an important role in his art, in terms of both material and content. If his paintings don't exhibit a consistent style, why should they? Instead, they combine oil painting and collage techniques, classical pictorial elements inspired by historical art, Neo-Expressionist features, as well as figuration and abstraction, gesture and structure. This volume presents a broad selection of Schnabel's paintings in a survey of his diverse oeuvre, with emphasis placed on works from 1990 to the present. Essays by Robert Fleck, Max Hollein, Alison Gingeras and Ingrid Pfeiffer. Hardcover, 10.25 x 11.5 in./176 pgs / 70 color and 30 b & w.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Julian Schnabel, who was born in 1951 in Brooklyn, New York, was among the young artists who were celebrated enthusiastically in the eighties for having helped revive painting, a genre which had been declared dead. His highly expressive large-format paintings soon made him a star of Neo-Expressive painting. Schnabel often uses unusual supports for his paintings - such as used army tarpaulins, porcelain plates, Mexican pottery, or animal skins - and his experimentation with materials is reflected in his painting as well. His works, which unite oil painting and collage, fluctuate between abstract and figurative, and are sometimes dominated by letters or words. This book presents sixty-five works from the past twenty-five years in full-page or double-page color illustrations. Photographs by Schnabel himself provide a look at the painter's opulent surroundings in his house and studio. The publication is completed by a detailed biography and essays by prominent authors.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

After last year's spectacular Julian Schnabel (Abrams), an oversized monograph assembled by the artist himself, this bilingual exhibition catalog may seem anticlimactic and even superfluous. However, its way of handling the subject is significantly different, taking a more traditional art book's approach to this contemporary painter's work by providing interpretive, critical, and biographical texts, which last year's book did without. Hollein, director of the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt (where this exhibit is being shown), selected the works for the exhibition himself; his goal is "to reconsider Schnabel's work-from a new, contemporary perspective and with a fresh, unbiased view." The five curators' essays succeed in offering a number of interpretations, mostly emerging from the weight of his art-star status and avoiding academic and theoretical language. The 68 color illustrations and two dozen black-and-white photographs overlap somewhat but not entirely, making this book necessary for completists and a good choice for libraries looking for an overview.-Carolyn Kuebler, Middlebury, VT Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

ACCREDITATION