Diving Bells and Oil Paintings
Why Julian Schnabel’s film and visual art has encouraged people to find a way to into our interior life since the 80’s.
Julian Schnabel, one of the most well known and controversial artists of the New York art scene in the 1980s and 1990s, came to prominence as a sculptor and painter of recognizable objects overflowing with raw energy, and emotion on oversized canvases and surfaces of unusual materials, such as velvet and animal hides or broken ceramics. But, it’s his work in film later in his career that keeps critics talking.
Julian was born on October 26th, 1951 in Brooklyn, NY and raised in Brownsville, TX. In fact, it was in the lone star state where he studied at the University of Texas in Houston from 1969 to 1973. He moved back to New York after earning his BFA and by 1975, he was being noticed by the Contemporary Art Museum. Frequent trips to Europe exposed him to the work of such unique artists as architect Antoni Gaudi and performance artist and sculptor Joseph Beuys, whose influence shaped Schnabel’s work and expanded his artistic horizons.
After his 1979 debut solo show in New York at the Mary Boone gallery, Julian came to prominence in the eighties as a leading figure in what came to be known as 'neo-expressionism'. He quickly found himself at the center of the growing movement but separated himself from the current scene with sleeker, more minimalist creations.
After decades, minimalism and conceptual art had completely eclipsed traditional painting and Julian Schnabel's work, which often displays romantic or heroic content, was seen as emotive and subjective. Julian’s work reflected his personality, which could be easily described as larger-than-life.
His interests expanded to film in the late nineties with Basquiat (1996), a biopic of his late friend, the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who had died from a heroin overdose in 1988. Jeffrey Wright interpreted Jean-Michel Basquiat, while David Bowie played Andy Warhol and Gary Oldman was Albert Milo. Julian Schnabel played himself in the film. Julian also recreated Basquiat’s art work for the film, due to the refusal of the late artist’s estate to give permission to use his original paintings. Basquiat was released in 1996 to mixed reviews. Many found Julian Schnabel indulging himself, while others viewed it favorably as a fair portrayal of the scene and the pressures, the artists endured in this era.
After Basquiat, Schnabel’s talent behind the camera took over. He received positive reviews for Before Night Falls, a challenging biopic based on the life of gay Cuban author, Reinaldo Arenas, whose writing and lifestyle earned him severe punishment at the hands of the Communist government. Acclaimed Spanish actor Javier Bardem, later known for his role in No Country for Old Men, played Reinaldo Arenas. Critics and audiences responded favorably to the film, which won several major awards at the Venice Film Festival in 2000, including the Grand Special Jury Prize.
In 2007, Julian returned to directing with another independent-minded project, the extremely moving The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The project received the best reviews of Schnabel’s film career, with many major critics placing it at the top of their year-in-review lists. Julian Schnabel earned Best Director awards from American and international film societies and critical groups, as well as the 2008 Golden Globe, including the trophy at Cannes 2007.
The film is unpredictable and chaotic. Flowing images reflect Julian’s paintings. The fact that it is in French, with subtitles, hardly gets in its way, because its real language is visual, creating an effect of unity. Julian Schnabel’s father, Jack died of cancer in 2004 at the age of 92, and lived with his son for the last year of his life. The film can be seen as a touching tribute to his father because he leaned heavily on the experience while making The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. In one scene, Jean-Dominique Bauby’s children play ball on the Normandy beach as he sits mute in a wheelchair, his face as a Cubist mask. Another scene finds him on a visit to his own invalid father, in which the younger shaved the older, as the older tells him of his failed marriage.
Schnabel’s art career continued during this period. He identified himself primarily as a painter who also directed films, with his work receiving regular showcases in galleries and museums around the world. Julian showed a body of work created from early 20th century hospital x-rays that he found in an abandoned house in Berk-sur-Mer. There is no differentiation between the paintings and the films because one informs the other in an œuvre that tenderly combines strands of bravura and insight into our humanness.
Since the artist's first sensational exhibition in New York in the early 1980s, Julian Schnabel's work has been celebrated enthusiastically as a new culmination of painting, a genre that had long been declared dead. Both his "Plate Paintings" based on porcelain shards and his highly expressive large-format oil paintings have found their way into most if not all important international collections.
Schnabel believed art is not leisure; art is a utilitarian thing that people can use to find a way into their interior life. A glance at one of his films or one his paintings serves as proof he found his way into his interior life and is just trying to show us a way into ours.
-Laure Brosson-
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