Julian Schnabel [Hardcover]

David Moos (Editor), Julian Schnabel (Editor), Gian Enzo Sperone (Contributor), Marco Voena (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2009

Julian Schnabel (b. 1951) is regarded throughout the world as one of the most important artists of our time. He burst onto the neo-expressionist art scene of the early 1980s with huge, arresting paintings on collaged shards of smashed plates, but is probably best known today as a successful filmmaker. His works combine oil painting and collage techniques, classical pictorial elements inspired by historical art, and neo-expressionist features. This volume provides a precise account of Julian Schnabel's artistic output over the last thirty years, describing the personality of a metamorphic and unpredictable artist and his bold, somewhat confrontational style reminiscent of the energy and daring of Picasso and Pollock. From the broken-plate paintings that brought him fame, to the recent, massively scaled Big Girls series, the artist's work is set in the context of his overall sensibility, becoming part of an ongoing pictorial diary of a life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Before he became known globally for his work as a filmmaker (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Julian Schnabel was a painter of works sometimes as large as a movie screen. Although a book cannot replicate the experience of seeing these paintings in person, the book spreads the nearly 200 reproductions generously over its thick glossy pages, each receiving a double-page spread, captioned with just title and date. To give a sense of scale, the book occasionally interrupts a series of paintings with a photograph of the work in location. Eight short essays rush to the defense of their subject, so that his early success with collectors and in the medium of film doesn't tarnish reception of his work. Painter David Salle writes: What set his work apart was his use of fragmented, physically demanding surface, which gave his vision of free association a kind of flickering, tentative quality that insists on the materiality of the painting. An expanded time line at the end of the book does the work of biography while the essays provide segues into the work itself: an interview with Schnabel, a meditation on experience by William Gaddis, a survey of Schnabel's monumental surfing paintings and more. (Mar.)
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About the Author

David Moos is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. He served as Curator of Contemporary Art at Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama. In this position he organized the traveling exhibitions: Jonathan Lasker: Selective Identity, William Wegman: Fashion Photographs, and Radcliff Bailey: the Magic City.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Skira (March 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 886130317X
• ISBN-13: 978-8861303171
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 1.5 x 11.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #200,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a book about an art work we have to think about, October 19, 2009

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Mario Rohnelt - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Julian Schnabel (Hardcover)

I bought this book because the is something intellectually exciting in Schnabel's work. Certainly we have something to learn about his paintings. Schnabel goes beyond all the rules we learned about what is and not is art, what can be and can not be done in art. This beautiful and well designed book has a hundred and more great reproductions of his paintings so we can follow his highly personal artistic output. There is some essays too that try, with some success, to shed a light on this unique artistic thought. I recommend specially the reading the texts by David Moos, David Moos & Bruce Fergunson, and David Salle. There is also a very good interview, produced by David Moos & Louise Neri, with the artist exposing his thoughts and beliefs on painting. We may agree or not with him, understand or not, but it's a way to get closer to this powerful art maker.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Monograph in Keeping with a Prodigious Artist's Gifts, July 29, 2009

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Julian Schnabel (Hardcover)

JULIAN SCHNABEL is a very large scale, hefty book about a hefty artist whose brilliance and contributions to the art world is equally as large - and important. Many people judged his early paintings that incorporated Melmac plates and shards as works that were thumbing his nose at the art world. But following the progress of this artist, that first impression could not have been further from the truth. From the gradual changes in his paintings and the growing sophistication of his exhibitions to the fine films he has created (Before Night Falls, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Basquiat, Lou Reed's Berlin) to the current integration of photography and painting - all make strong statements both visually and philosophically.

Schnabel is never less than interesting, even to the toughest of critics. This very excellent book edited by David Moos (and Schnabel!), and with informative essays by Gian Enzo Sperone and Marco Voena covers the spectrum of Schnabel's life from his birth in 1951 to the present. Even the most devoted fan of his artistic output will be impressed with the photographs of exhibitions - with comments scrawled across the pages from Schnabel himself - and with the newest works, including the girls with no eyes series and the stunning Japanese paintings of wispy floating multifaceted figures suspended above an aqueous matrix.

Though there have been many books published about this amazingly gifted artist, few are as complete as this. The quality of reproductions and the depth of information would be difficult to match. A collector item in book form. Grady Harp, July 09