Julian Schnabel

Life on the Big Canvas Meet the full range of Julian Schnabel’s work

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.