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Hamburg (dpa) - What do Julian Schnabel (69) and Roman antiquity have to do with each other?
At first glance, nothing, but when you stepped into the Maison Carrée in Nîmes in the south of France in the 1990s, the sublime force of three huge paintings by the painter unexpectedly struck you in this 2000 year old temple.
An art of overpowering: this man paints big, this man thinks big, this man lives big.
Gigantism.
Julian Schnabel was inspired by the building itself: “I went there.
I looked at the walls.
I painted the pictures, ”he once told the culture magazine“ The Miami Rail ”.
So who is this extravagant grandmaster who is as successful as a painter and sculptor as he is as a filmmaker.
Who lives in an eccentric and palazzo-like residence in New York and also likes to roam the canyons in pajamas.
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The voluminous oeuvre of Julian Schnabel has now been published in a limited collector's edition by Taschen Verlag - the artist himself worked on it for many years.
He is a curious artist, a particularly “hungry artist”, writes Éric de Chassey in an accompanying essay in which the artist is artistically positioned between figuration, abstraction, post-modernism and neo-expressionism - even if there is always a touch of imponderability resonates.
He makes use of all media, writes de Chassey: canvas, cotton, fabric, tarpaulin, brush, stick, spray can, hose - for Julian Schnabel there seems to be no limit, everything is inspiration to him, everything is material to him.
In doing so, he carries the history of art within him, which glows again and again in his work.
This also includes the painting technique of the Romans - and so we come full circle to the Maison Carrée.
Tradition and modernity, past and present.
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"Anything can be the template for a painting - a poplar, another painting, a stain," says Julian Schnabel.
That is the philosophy of his art, which he expresses again particularly clearly in his film “Van Gogh - On the Threshold of Eternity”.
The brittle work is also about Van Gogh (played by Willem Dafoe), but above all it is also about Julian Schnabel himself.
He was a young savage who started his career in New York in the 1970s.
Julian Schnabel became famous above all for his plate pictures, in which painting and ceramics met in a dazzling way, the plane surface of the canvas was repeatedly disturbed by reflections, changed and put into tension.
A vibrant painting that has its own vitality.
Laurie Anderson in particular brings us closer to Julian Schnabel in a sensitive essay.
The multimedia artist lived with her husband, rock icon Lou Reed, in New York's West Village across from Julian Schnabel, who helped turn their homes into dreams.
Red velvet was poured over two stories, a mast became a banister and "the living room became a Shakespearian courtyard."
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"When I think of Julian, I think of love and the passion with which he does everything - surfing, cooking, painting, making films, writing, being a father, son, husband, friend," writes Laurie Anderson.
TASCHEN, Julian Schnabel, Hans Werner Holzwarth and Louise Kugelberg With texts by Laurie Anderson, Eric de Chassey, Bonnie Clearwater, Donatien Grau, Max Hollein, Daniel Kehlmann, hardcover in a clamshell box, 33 x 44 cm, 570 pages, Collector's Edition limited to 1,000 numbered and signed by Julian Schnabel copies 750 euros, also available in two different Art Editions
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210121-99-121225 / 6
Julian Schnabel at Taschen Verlag