Shnabel hung around with Andy Warhol then turned fact into fiction in his movie Basquiat (bottom)
82 THE LIST FESTIVAL GUIDE ‘ '.: .
huge painting li/m Muir wit/i Smut/v that really sealed his fate w ith his critics. It represents everything they came to love and hate about his art. .-\ naked blue warrior straddles two columns. The ground of the painting is not made up of a canvas but an une\ en wooden board onto which smashed plates have been stuck. Part mosaic. part primitivisl cave scratching. the painting has an ama/ing dynamic vested in its materials. Schnabel’s sly le here is ironic — he is celebrating the space where high and low cultures can e\ist while pastiching and criticising established theories about art. In short. he “as taking the piss while still wanting to be taken sei‘iotisly. This painting was eventually brought by the (ialerie Bruno Bischolberger in Zurich like all of Schnabel's work from this period for an c\lol'lionale amount of money.
()v er the nut decade and a half Schnabel started cultivating a lone hero hedonistic celebrity image. lle hung around with the beautiful people (mostly Warhol's liactory cronies and the assorted cliques he ran into in Studio 54). He would drive around the Big Apple in his (‘adillac ~ all muscle and angst in a white \esl. He began creating his work in an adapted tennis court and he made otiti'ageous statements to
the press that revealed that modesty was certainly not one of
his strong points. But his work stayed at a consistently high level. with only the titles becoming more bombastic (Harm (“u/his .VU 3 and l’ril'll‘uil n/‘(imL for instance i.
By the end of the His. the Yugtislav-American sutwr-dealer. l.eo ('astelli. \\ as shifting his work by the shed—full and one ('harles Saatchi was buying him. Despite being execrated by some pretty influential critics. Schnabel had. as they say. hit the big time. His presence was indeed so high in the contemporary art scene of the early 90s that the precedents he
scl for the cost of modern all
still rev erbcrate to the very
bottom of the colleclor's wallet
to this day. The boy was on to a
good thing . . . and then he went
and changed career.
In 19% Schnabel made his
WANTING TO BE TAKEN
chummy affair peopled by
Schnabel‘s showbi/ mates
first feature lilm. It cost $3.3m (film) and it was a eulogy to (Bowie. Hopper. ()ldman and Tatum ()'.\'eal). but it was
his dead friend and fellow artist Basquiat. It was a clumsy.
likeable if a little symbolically top heavy. Four years later
Schnabel made his second film. another biopic. this one about Reinaldo Arenas. a (‘uban writer betrayed by the revolution because of his homosexuality. lie/ore Night I'll/IS was close to brilliance. despite its slightly dodgy. possibly reactionary
by ass Schnabel seemed to have developed into a filmmaker of
considerable voice and lyricism in the intervening years.
Schnabel soon returned to his Montauk studio and began to work on the art that will be showing at lidinburgh this festival: he began to haetnorrhage customised surf boards. large paintings. sculptures and some excessively large Polaroid photographs of his family. Schnabel once again seems to be proving that his was a talent that time and fashion would not rescind. This work is so rich. it makes the viewer totally re-evaluate his or her opinion of this relic from a very different New York.
Are we blessed to have him come to lnverleith House this year'.’ Hell yeah. this new stuff is terrific but. as Mark Francis of the (iagosian (iallery points out. Schnabel‘s motives for returning to .-\uld Reekie may just be more heartfelt than commercial.
‘He loves the idea of the festival. with its whole range of
activities. and he loves the space at lnverleith House. but I think maybe in the back of his mind he remembers that his great friend Jean-Michel Basquiat was given his first liuropean break in a small exhibition at the Fruitmarket (iallery in NM.”
Bless. money for once may not have been a consideration for the big guy.
Julian Schnabel opens at lnverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 9 Aug-26 Oct.
WHO TURNED T0 FILM
There are many great artists who have dabbled in the world of filmmaking: Cocteau, Dali, Renoir . . . Here are five we particularly love. WOrds: Paul Dale
we f“
‘9‘“ -‘"
. .4- I Y Jean Cocteau The daddy of them all. this brilliant poet. painter and writer gave us two of the great gifts of
cinematic lyricism La Bel/e et La Béte and Orphee.
«s “x id?" ‘4 gs. .. ..
Pier Paolo Pasollnl The Italian street boy. Pasolini always had a hankering to return to the art world of his formative years. He even cast himself as an artist in his own film The Decameron.
Derek Jarman That‘s Saint Derek to you and me. This awesome. prolific painter. set designer and gardener made one the finest films ever made about an artist '3 life: Caravaggio.
Damian Hirst Hirst made his directorial debut in 2000 with his 45- second film version of Samuel Beckett's shortest play Breath starring Keith Allen.
Matthew Barney Films by the bonkers Californian artist. Barney. have been described as ‘Greenaway without the narrative flow'. His complete. bizarre Cremaster Cycle of five films is being shown at this year's Film Festival. Miss at your peril.