It is somewhat ironic that Julian Schnabel’s current Canadian exhibition, Julian Schnabel: Art and Film, Art Gallery of Ontario’s version of New York City’s MoMA, is following in the footsteps of the museum’s King Tut exhibition. Both men are known for doing things in a very big way: King Tut with his pyramid; Schnabel, highly evidenced in this show, with his titanic canvases that all but dwarf the common man. For the fifty-nine year old Schnabel, all the rage for his smashed plate paintings during the late 70s and early 80s, before eventually falling off the art world pedestal, this exhibition—the largest since his 1987 Whitney Museum Retrospective—is tantamount to a Second Coming. Fine Arts Magazine  

He gratefully acknowledged that, “the ball has come back into my court” in his press preview. Not that he ever stopped playing or, for that matter, stopped painting. But, as people’s tastes and life transitioned, Julian, himself, turned to film direction, even further eclipsing his reputation as a painter.   

Art and Film, deftly curated by David Moos, is an ingenious means of refurbishing Schnabel’s all-but-forgotten art world reputation, while reintroducing him to the general public, now more familiar with his films than his art. The exhibition incorporates some sixty of Schnabel’s works. Beginning with his Painting Norma (Pool Painting for Norma Desmond), 1975 (a tribute to the film, Sunset Boulevard), to the present, the show traces the artist’s interest in cinema through his paintings, sculptures, and photographs, many of which directly reference specific actors, filmmakers and their films, such as Pasolini’s, Accattone and Vittorio de Sica’s, Shoeshine.  

 Film is an interest, according to Schnabel, dating back to his childhood, growing up in Brooklyn during the 50s. “Just like painting, going to the movies was an escape for me from the ordinariness of everyday life at home,” Schnabel told me during a pre-opening interview. “Movies were more real to me than my life at home. As a child, I found The Ten Commandments, when Moses parts the Red Sea, totally awesome, and Moby Dick, when you get to see the great white whale’s eye, as terrifying. When I first saw Repulsion, I realized a movie can really get inside of you. It could haunt you, and you could identify with it.”  

Ironically, the exhibition is an intimate experience, despite the immense size of the canvases, and the fact that the artist’s work takes up the entire 5th floor of the museum. This is due, in large part, to the intensely personal and arcane nature of many of the works. Crowds aside, the viewer is frequently reminded—by the size, power, and experimental brashness of the artist’s executions—that there are really only three elements at play here—the viewer, the looming works of art, and the hand of Schnabel, whose resonant signature-style announces itself at every turn.  

The first painting, Last Dairy Entry (for Roman Polanski), 2010, meets you head-on as you walk into the exhibition. Though I do not presume to know what it is about, nor what it represents, the lush, crazily-colored figure in the painting is a mix of a tamped-down Frances Bacon, an Alice in Wonderland character, and a dizzy dame…highly exciting and very much alive. It is one of the few works in the exhibition that jumps out at you, actively grabbing your attention, rather than engulfing or overwhelming you, as many of his larger works tend to do.  

 A couple of Schnabel’s historical smashed plate paintings—resurrected from the dust bin of history—are on view, most prominently his groundbreaking, Patients and the Doctors (1978). (above) They bear none the initial excitement engendered when they first turned the art world on its head, some thirty-plus years ago. At least for now, and until they are gathered en masse for maximum effect (hopefully soon!), they remain an anachronistic oddity. Equally unengaging, though shedding some light on the artist’s respect for Marlin Brando, who he considers “the greatest actor that we’ve seen”, is the Brando Room. Here, six large, relatively mundane, poster-like photographs, bought by Schnabel from the actor’s estate, depict Brando in a long-haired wig, kidding around during the filming of his 1968 comedy, Candy. By adding spray paint, resin, and ink to the surface of these photographs, Schnabel, claiming this work for his own, transformed the images into paintings. These same works first appeared in a fantasy scene in Schnabel’s 2007 film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  

 Another small gallery is filled with portraits that Schnabel has painted, including one of himself that reads “from the collection of Johnny Depp.” Even with their tacky framing, bespeaking young and very early 80s, the slickly-painted, slightly garish portraits, are compelling in a nervous sort of way, and not half-bad. Gary Oldman, who as Albert Milo, played Schnabel in the film, Basquiat, is presented wearing a traje de luces (suit of lights), belonging to Curro Romero, the famous Spanish bullfighter. Rula Jabreal, Schnabel’s current love interest, and the author of the book on which Schnabel’s soon-to-be-released movie, Miral, is based (opening worldwide this December), is seen wearing the same dress that actress Emma de Caunes wore in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, during one of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s reveries.  

The most compelling portrait on view is, The Portrait of Andy Warhol (1982), painted on black velvet, in two sittings and 5 hours. Here, a shirtless, ghostly Warhol, looking even more vulnerable than usual, is an apparition rather than a live human being, appearing to be dematerializing before our very eyes.  

 Schnabel returns to the theme of bullfighting in the exhibit’s three largest paintings—each 22 feet square, just short of the gallery’s 23-foot ceilings—were painted in 1990, specifically to be exhibited in the city of Nîmes at the Maison Carée, an ancient Roman temple. Here, the three canvases, removed from their original site, present like epics movies relegated to a small television screen; the sense of wonder they were intended to purvey being severely muted. We are left with three very large, mildly interesting abstract paintings that might mean more to the artist than the viewing public. What is interesting about these works, though, is the unique, totally unexpected way – a well-known signature feature of the artist – that they came to be. “I took a table cloth, dipped it in oil paint thinned with a lot of turpentine and used it to create the painting. So all of this drawing that looks like printing, like gravure, is, in fact, made by taking a big linen sheet and throwing it in the canvas. Sometimes I even rolled it up and used it like a bat.”  

One near-mesmerizing, disarmingly-simple painting that still resonates with me—one of fourteen that Schnabel’s painted for his Big Girl Paintings series in 2001—is, Large Girl With No Eyes (above).  Going large again – roughly 14-by-12 feet – we see a young blonde girl, from the shoulders up, wearing a blue dress. If she could, she would appear to be looking straight out at us. The artist, however, strips her of vision, barring us further from entering into the picture by painting a long black bar that masks her eyes. Schnabel’s stated intent, for this painting as well as the entire exhibition – here perfectly, if not hypnotically achieved –“is to force the viewer to look at the painting and not the eyes.”  

The most cinematically stunning works on view are Painting for Malik Joyeux and Bernardo Bertolucci V and VI (2006) (above), two enormous black and white photographs, from Schnabel’s Surfing series. Again, by adding gesso and ink to the polyester canvas, the artist turns a simple photograph of a surfer negotiating a giant rolling wave – somewhat akin to turning a script into a movie – into a breathtakingly dizzying ride, all but magically pulling us into a canvas that is more alive than inanimate.  

Not a bad ending for a Schnabel comeback.  

by Edward Rubin, Contributing Writer  

Edward Rubin writes about art, culture and entertainment. Although based in New York City, he travels frequently to cover international events.  

Visit the Art Gallery of Ontario at www.ago.net

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The YouTube videos below refer to Julian Schnabel’s lastest film, Miral. One video is a movie trailer; the other features Rula Jabreal, author of the book Miral, on which the film is based, and Julian Schnabel’s current companion, talking about the experiences that compelled her to write the book.  She stresses the importance of the film’s message: that peace between Palestine and Israel, is not only desired, but necessary.   

 Miral, based on Jabreal’s own real life experience, is the story of four Palestinian women, whose lives intertwine in the starkly-human search for justice, hope and reconciliation, amid a world overshadowed by conflict, rage and war. The story begins in war-torn Jerusalem in 1948, when Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass) opens an orphanage for refugee children, that quickly becomes home to 2000 orphans!

 One of the children is seventeen year old Miral—the real-life Rula Jabreal—who arrived at the orphanage 10 years earlier, following her mother’s tragic death.  Miral is played by Frida Pinto, of Slumdog Millionaire fame. On the cusp of the Intifada resistance, Miral is assigned to teach at a refugee camp, where she falls for a fervent political activist, Hani (Omar Metwally), and finds herself in a personal battle that mirrors the greater dilemma around her: to fight like those before her or follow Mama Hind’s defiant belief that education will pave a road to peace.

 Miral was shown at the Toronto and Venice Film Festivals where it won the UNICEF Humanitarian Award. Though not yet released worldwide the film, controversial to say the least, is already being attacked on several fronts. Critics are seeing it as being a too one-sided, even propagandistic, meaning that it is far too Pro-Palestinian.  Some would believe this perspective on the conflict is portrayed unfairly. at the expense of Israel. This might help to explain why Vanessa Redgrave, the notoriously pro-Palestine actress, was given a cameo role. Another controversy is Fridia Pinto’s acting talents, which a number of critics are claiming is non-existent.      

 Below, is a snippet from an interview that I conducted with Julian Schnabel on August 26, 2010.  Having read Miral, I just had to ask him about this controversial political message. Schnabel weighs in on the possibility that the film is pro-Palestine…       

 Edward Rubin: I think Miral is going to be a pretty controversial film. Do you think that the press will sweep the seemingly pro-Palestinian politics under the rug or have you not, with your film, stoked the controversy?

 Julian Schnabel; Actually, it is not a pro-Palestinian movie. It is a pro-peace movie. And I think what is good for the Palestinians is good for the Israeli’s and vice versa.

 ER: Well, you also say that people forget that painting is an act of peace.

 JS: Absolutely so.