Julian Schnabel Boeken

Published to accompany the first UK retrospective of Emin's work, covering her output during the last 20 years.

Julian Schnabel transforms everyday life into art, using unconventional materials like broken plates, velvet, and boxing ring floors, which add depth to his creative exploration. A prominent figure in the resurgence of painting since his acclaimed 1979 New York solo show, he has expanded his practice to include sculptures that embody his pictorial forms as raw, timeless artifacts, award-winning films that celebrate artists and heroic figures, and even a Venetian palace in New York. Schnabel expresses a desire for his life to be intertwined with his work, stating, “I want my life to be in my work, crushed into my painting like a pressed car.” This urgency is evident throughout his diverse oeuvre. Now available in a popular edition, this TASCHEN monograph offers an in-depth portrayal of Schnabel's complete body of work, created in dialogue with the artist. Contributions from friends and collaborators provide intimate insights, while essays by curators and art historians delve into various aspects of his art, including paintings, sculptures, and site-specific works. The edition also features reflections on Palazzo Chupi, his extravagant home, and an exploration of his cinematic contributions. This comprehensive collection provides a generous opportunity to engage with Schnabel’s art beyond direct experience.

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.

German