2/10/2006

Julian Schnabel

55 comments:

Anonymous said...

i LOVE julian schnabel. admittedly, not all of his shows are as elegant as he can be (for example the show of "big girls" at gagosian didnt really do it for me AT ALL) but he just keeps going forward. this painting looks really nice. he has done some amazing work over the years. i think its really hard to use language effectively in a painting, and he seems to have a knack for it.

i first became interested in his work during grad school mainly b/c all of my prof's HATED him with such a passion it made me curious. i researched him and fell in love.

i love his "there is no place as horrible as a fox farm...." series and paintings on velvet are divine.

Anonymous said...

i LOVE julian schnabel. admittedly, not all of his shows are as elegant as he can be (for example the show of "big girls" at gagosian didnt really do it for me AT ALL) but he just keeps going forward. this painting looks really nice. he has done some amazing work over the years. i think its really hard to use language effectively in a painting, and he seems to have a knack for it.

i first became interested in his work during grad school mainly b/c all of my prof's HATED him with such a passion it made me curious. i researched him and fell in love.

i love his "there is no place as horrible as a fox farm...." series and paintings on velvet are divine.

Anonymous said...

Radical!

Anonymous said...

I hate this painting. He has some good work, definitely, but I find the text on this one annoying and this 'spill' series is just boring to me. The velvet ones and broken plates ones have a good energy, but not this. Schnabel's all about energy.

Anonymous said...

what, noone blogs on fridays?
i'm bored at work here, people!

zipthwung said...

After Adorno how can I blog?

fairy butler said...

sorry bb. i've got nothing to say re:schnabel. i dunno. this image doesn't seem so bad, but in general his name conjures up "a big mess"

Anonymous said...

who's worse fb, Schnabel or Salle?

Anonymous said...

salle is way worse. schnabel makes good movies.

fairy butler said...

i feel like there are instances of schnabel & salle that are good, but it's case by case. i would like to see a schnabel retrospective. could be interesting - in repect to the rauschenberg combines? i dunno.

JD said...

Yes, FB, lots of big messes. It's hard to know how to really look at Schnabel these days; perhaps it's unfair to say, but his persona is almost bigger than his art. I associate him with a particularly macho kind of space-taking-up swagger.

On the other hand, some of his stuff from the eighties can seem kind of great: the antlers and the broken dishes are some kind of morphing of dada bad-boy cynicism and the true-belief of the New York School. They certainly have energy and are kinda fun.

Not my bag, though, in general.

fairy butler said...
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Anonymous said...

schnable is a hack. more than salle. but they are both abysmal artist. and the fact that lollobrigida like his work inspires me confidence in it's total lack of value. and the fact that lollo also finds him 'elegant' is more proof of how easily women are tricked into putting out by the most obvious schemes of overweight lotharios.

Anonymous said...

look i'm sorry about the bad grammar and typing, but it's very early where i live.
anyway aargh - when it comes to accusations of mysogyny and pornographic female debasing art, look to julian schnable, not to hilo chen. chens probably gay or in a monogamous 40 year marriage whereas julian, well we all know what OLATZ looks like. zzzzzzzz.
schnabel is the worst.
almost as bad as will cotton in terms of total emptiness and zzzzzzzz

Anonymous said...

charlie finces article about natalie frank on artnet is absolutely the worst. her work looks terrible. total student work. finch is such a pig

Anonymous said...

I know!!! What an idiot Finch is. It makes me want to hate the work more than I would have... He doesn't even really talk about the work! He's kind of just bragging about how he's making this girl's career. And he has mediocre taste and is really mean for no reason. Ugh!!

JD said...

I totally agree about Finch. Hi writing sucks, and he has no ideas at all. He just HAD to throw in that wife-beater T-shirt comment; what a greasy lech. And what's up with his silly obsession with Yale?

Anonymous said...

i was mortified to see that finch article. i went to that show and was embarrassed for the artist. i know that's really mean to say, but gee whiz. any pile of horse shit from columbia gets a review these days.

Anonymous said...

if she is one of the hardest working painters ever, it finally blows the theory that hard work pays off.

ouch, i'm being a terrible person today.

Anonymous said...

The hardest working painter "ever" oh god. This is everything that is wrong with the art world all contained in one article.

Anonymous said...

and he does it all "for free"

Anonymous said...

she painted in a studio WITHOUT air conditioning!! all summer long!!!

someone issue a fatwah on CF. what is this article about ? the artist or his 'power' in promoting?

Anonymous said...

I think Finch and Schnabel should have a sumo contest. Loser has to immediately leave New York in shame.

dubz said...

did anyone read finch's "i got married, i'm in love" piece? i almost barfed.

Anonymous said...

schnabel and finch should team up to become the corporate logo for genital warts

Anonymous said...

poor poor woman who married him, she'll find out soon enough. actually i cannot believe somebody even married that slob. not a pretty picture. and the wife beater comment, oh my god. i cant even begin to describe the hatred i feel for his writing and what he does, there is almost nobody else who i think is as bad. i just cant believe that he gets away with it over and over again. maybe he'll leave and go live in new haven already.

satanarchy said...

wow Nathalie frank's work is total dogshite - that kind of stuff wouldnt even get an interview at most grad schools -

Charlie finch = so ridiculous he's absolutley negligable. Really a shame he has as many opportunities as he does to publish.

Anonymous said...

DOYE! okay hey mayberry, you got me, i'm just a moron. i should never have criticized the intellectual heavyweights schnabel, salle, and wil cotton. what was i thinking?
you obviously haven't noticed the general tenor of posts on this board as they relate to you, which is that, you're the windbag no one seems to like.
does this sound moronic?
Blow me, your mom will be here to do the same in 45 minutes.

dubz said...

sorry hey mayberry - that you thought i had something against her from my other posts. i didn't mean to sound that way. i just said the paintings were icky if i recall, but it was nothing personal. i was surprised when her painting appeared on this blog the first time, and was surprised again today to see that finch had done a review. i guess i didn't expect them to get much attention because they seemed pretty unresolved to me, mostly in terms of the handling. nothing personal. just not my kind of painting.

Anonymous said...

it just needs to be backed up by more of an authority of what she wants the paint to do.

hey don't worry about the fact that this doesn't make any sense, linguistically or otherwise, because i'm a real fucking big shot!

Anonymous said...

this is fucking ridiculous-- hey mayberry is awesome. he's funny. he has opinions. he states them well and interestingly. he's not a wanker. he cares. i was just talking to a friend on the phone today about the blog and we agreed that hey mayberry is our favorite new member of the painternyc regulars. we also said that we even appreciated the haters, because it gets so incredibly interesting.
i love julian schnabel and i am a queer and a girl! and i dont care if he's macho. his paintings inspired me when i was in school, i love a big mess, they are irrational and kind of stupid, but they are materially gorgeous, exciting, he threw painting into a whole new awesome place when i was in school by making it something contentious. i love him.
i HATE CHARLIE FINCH more than life itself. he is an asswipe.

Anonymous said...

and cheers to you whoever you are painter for inventing this crazy place where we all have opinions. but please you guys. can you at least opine more on painting than on the other commenters? for crissake.

Anonymous said...

hey what's the place where i can read (and cringe) the finch thing on frank?? is it artnet??
(ugh)
can we start a blogger's petition to get cf off the air over there????

Corny said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Edna said...

I posted a piece about Finch on my blog. Click my name for the link. I also provide a link to the piece on Artnet.

Anonymous said...

Too good for royals!!! YES! how can you not love that, I'm so mad I didn't make this painting...

Schnabel rules. He's slightly out of control, inventive, ugly but elegant, one of my all time favorite painters.
Since when does it matter if a painter is sexist? Sharikov does picasso's work offend you too? Who cares about the personality of the artist, Do you only like nice artists who recycle their soy milk boxes? learn to see through the bullshit my dear.

Anon who loves Schabel, I second what you said about his paintings being materially gorgeous. Yes downright sexy.

Anonymous said...

I am wondering at the lack of dialog around this painting. Is it because Schnabel's relevance is so over? I don't particularly care one way or another about his work. At one time it was interesting; now it seems overhyped and irrelevant. Kind of fun, but not more than that.

Anonymous said...

It's gotta be difficult for an artist who made his fame and fortune by gimmick to now be taken seriously for anything but. And it's gotta be really difficult to keep inventing new disposable gimmicks. Schnabel jumped the shark early on, which leaves nothing but diminishing returns.

My only suggestions would be drastic ones. Like, chop that top right corner right off the painting and let the thing really be an awkwardly shaped fragment of a poster. That white triangle is an unsatisfying distraction from an already boring assemblage of shapes and text. As it is, it's just a poorly laid out advert for some anti-monarchy kick.

Anonymous said...

Well I guess I have to agree that women are easily taken in by overweight charismatic men, which must account for my tepid interest in Schnabel. He is messy and ambitious, which can result in good and bad, depending on the type of plate or support he uses.

Meanwhile, as to Finch, what more can we expect? Really, his drooling ways come as no surprise. It's only a matter of time before I fall in love with him too. That tingly feeling is comng over me.

Anonymous said...

what exactly was the gimmick ahab?
Just asking...

Anonymous said...

MM glad you are back!

Anonymous said...

yes, MM we missed you terribly. it was, like, a whole entire day goddammit! and look what we got...Schnabelerama. total snoresville.

Anonymous said...

Schnabel's big gimmick has already been mentioned a number of times - smashed china painting.

I would say it's pretty obvious that royalty smashing is still his soapbox topic of choice. As if there are any assumptions left about high art to hammer at.

zipthwung said...

Julian S lets people smoke at his shows. Plus he's got a sense of humor, I think. So but hten, hes trapped by this "I'm Julian Fukin' Schnabel" thing. What if he was a real person?

Anonymous said...

Why are the plates a gimmick, please explain.

Professor Mouth said...

The plates are a gimmick because they are employed to distinguish paintings that are, in their imagery and material handling, completely unremarkable.

With most of the broken china work, I feel that if the crockery were removed, I would look at them and think... 'Huh. Georg Baselitz must be having an off day'.

I kind of like the Schabel that's posted here, though. It looks like a big fat cranky underacheiver. Which is the sort of character I tend to like.

By the way, nice blog, painter.

Anonymous said...

Fat, cranky underachiever - I like that. I prefer chubby underdogs, myself.

Anonymous said...

wow I totally totally disagree that the plates thing was a gimmick. i dont know if you (ahab or the other detractors of the plate thing) were around when those paintings started to be shown, but I was and i was amazed at the inventiveness of the idea (AT THAT TIME) of puting something broken all over your painting so that it literalized in a funny, outrageous and goofy way, the whole boring discussion (OF THE TIME) around the "cubist infrastructure" etc. You have no idea (if you werent a student then as i was) how punk it was, the broken crockery. it was such a relief (pardon the pun) after years of folded paper, polite squares, meaningful stuff. it was clearly a fuck you. it was funny. it was garish, ugly, in your face. it was not a snooze. it was not snoresville. it was great. i know it doesnt always look like it in hindsight but i remember someone telling me how rad the early stellas were if you were there, too, and how i felt they were boring but in context it was different.
ok so now it's later and is he still great/ well he kind of went away for at least a decade so i have no problem w/ him-- i mean, he went off and made some amazingly beautiful movies (esp. the cuban one.) i give the guy mad props.

zipthwung said...

thanks anon, I was on the farm back then - hard to get the joke when its contextualized in a textbook....

I did see that big show at gago - in a way every bit as good as the Anselm Keifer show there later - because size matters. And after Adorno, well you know.

Anonymous said...

i know, so true, zippy. i'm old. and it always blows my mind to talk to even older painters about the way work was received when it first came out. whether radical or not, before the "history" sets in. like monochrome painting. once radical. now....? noone gives a shit. hardly anyone under 40 liked the eliz. murray show at moma. more people liked it if they were around when she first started showing.

Anonymous said...

Okay, "mad props" anonymous. Sounds like the memory of your Schnabel experience is a good one. Sentimental, no?

If there is a joke to get, it's on Schnabel. The actual effect of standing in front of the broken dinnerware is not "he sure showed those abexers what's what." The actual effect is more along the lines of "I wonder if he broke new plates or used found ones?"

No matter what he intended, or what art historians write that he intended, his assemblage of china is about how broken pottery looks on a wall. To extrapolate any other meaning, well, we might just as well make the associative leap that the work is about the Great Wall of China - the kind of weak pun that daily papers like best (somebody somewhere thinks it's a powerful metaphor, I'm sure).

The broken plates are gimmicky because they attract an audience but divert their attention from his otherwise pertinent complaints about art. They are a weak pun.

But I like the junkpile look of the fired clay.

zipthwung said...

i like gimmicks. It was explained to me that inschool gimmicks are bad because they are not authentic or insert argument here.

But in order to do well you need a gimmick doncha? I mean I'd never have gotten anywhere without my X-ray specs or my joy buzzer. Was anyone disappointed to find out that the joy buzzer was wind up and not electric? That sea monkeys were the invention of a Neo nazi ? That the "monkeys" were actually just brine shrimp? Me too.

Scott said...

I too came from a love/hate relationship with Schnabel's work while in school. Studying his importance in the 80's with his plate paintings and such never really grabbed me. I unfortunately was not around at the time he he came into prominence so my view of his work of that period is skewed.

This said, the more I see of his work the more it has grown on me. Particularly the paintings, from the 90's to now, though i still hold some reservation for the "untitled (girl with no eyes)" series. I now consider myself a fan of his work and look forward to one day seeing a retrospective of his work so i can better experience a chronology of his work.

As for this particular painting. I actually like this body of work. What I feel Schnabel has brought to the table to painting today is a continued play on large scale. To see these pieces in person, they become more impacting. After all this piece is 13' x 9'. His works also have to contend with architecture in a way that a lot of painting never seems to approach.

But, as for those plate paintings... I am still not a fan of those.

Anonymous said...

Not going to harsh on Frank because if galleries show student work obviously it is going to look like student work but Finch is a human train wreck,old money wasp who writes like he hasn't gotten laid in a decade. He turns on people immediately after he puffs them up. Yale only counts if you go there because you are smart as opposed to rich& legacy. Somebody, preferably a woman should take this delusional prick down. My dealer forced me to humor him & I wanted to take a shower afterwards. Waiting and working hard for the day when I won't post this anonymously.

A COLLAGE A DAY said...

I hate the plate paintings. They are big and clunky, but they were different and that was enough
R