Raphael Rubinstein, in the essay The Big Picture, Reconsidering Julian Schnabel [1], argues that Julian Schnabel’s contributions to painting have been overlooked. His reasoning behind this is that Schnabel was already a cultural figure due to his filmmaking career at the time, which severely overshadowed the value of his paintings. "His paradox is to be at once highly visible as a cultural figure and deeply invisible as a painter."[2] I would agree with Rubinstein’s argument here as it is hard to be well known for more than one thing at a time. For example, Leonardo Da Vinci’s contributions to science and technology where overshadowed due to his famous paintings.
Rubinstein’s next point is that Schnabel’s works’ suffer from reproduction more than most. His perception is, that due to the extreme materiality and large scale of Schnabel’s work, it is impossible to experience his work as intended unless it is viewed in person. The haptic nature of Schnabel’s works are lost in the digital format. It is his view that the works are also diminished due to the reduction in scale they go through when being reduced for online viewing. This could be seen as a major contributing factor for Schnabel’s unfortunate underappreciation. Without the ability for a Schnabel’s work to translate well digitally, it is reasonable to assume that he lost potential interest in his works from some critics. This is because most marketing for shows are made digitally, and most artists display their works via a website to gain visibility. Without the ability to reproduce his works on a ever important platform, Schnabel’s relevance was surely effected.
Rubinstein then goes on to propose that the haptic nature of Schnabel’s work, (which was what made it hard to market digitally), was in fact what made Schnabel’s work special. The material play found in his paintings was mostly seen in sculpture at the time. So, Schnabel’s use of texture, and non-traditional painting materials was seemingly overlooked. “What Schnabel brought to painting was the kind of freewheeling approach to materials that had been pioneered in Post-Minimalist sculpture, and by early 1970s abstract experimenters such as Alan Shields and Harmony Hammond.”[3] In terms of Schnabel’s scale, Rubinstein’s reasoning is that the decision to make his paintings large was not to do with the artist’s ambition but more to do with his desire to engage with historic painters such as Michael Angelo, who worked at an architectural scale.
Rubinstein claims that Schnabel’s exposure to the Catholic traditions of Mexico, (as he and his family moved there as a child), impacted the contextual side to his paintings. Rubinstein justifies this by explaining that, “To read certain images and objects in Schnabel's work as Milagros would mean that, for this artist, the painting is an altar.” Milagros, he explains are offerings left on Catholic shrines throughout Mexico. In this context, Rubinstein’s argument brings a whole new way of reading Schnabel’s work, adding a layer of context that is easily missed. Understanding Schnabel’s paintings in this sense would explain his use of large architectural scale, as well as his use of religious imagery.
Rubinstein claims Schnabel’s dismissal has a lot to do with Schnabel’s tendency to value the romantic side of art versus the critical side, which was deemed the more important aspect of Fine Art in the 1980’s. "I suspect that Schnabel's insistence on what many dismiss as the romantic side of Abstract Expressionism partly accounts for his marginalization: he's like the inconvenient relative who reminds us of a piece of embarrassing family history."[4] This is an interesting point as modern painters are often caught in-between a delicate balance of not losing the soul or aura of painting while also engaging the critical thinking surrounding their intentions. It could be argued that Schnabel hit a sweet spot, which perhaps the art world was not ready for in his time. The sweet spot being his willingness to allow his human emotion to drive some of his creation while not losing sight of contextual relevance. This is a hard thing to do, and I agree that Schnabel’s ability to harness both sides of the coin are a part of what makes his works so interesting, and is also what keeps them feeling fresh.
Rubinstein’s hypothesis is that Schnabel’s underappreciation could have affected the progression of the neo-expressionist movement. He elaborates by pointing out that while sculpture at the time valued new experiments with non-traditional materials, painting was stuck using mostly traditional and predictable materials. Schnabel’s use of ceramic, and tarpaulin was unique and enhanced physicality of his paintings. No one else was doing it at the time, and perhaps if he was appreciated more in his day the trajectory of Neo-Expressionism would have been different. "We might not have spent so much time playing out the endgames of abstraction; we might have seen the physical components of painting subjected to the same explosion of resources that occurred in sculpture and installation art; we might have enjoyed a wealth of art driven by emotion and empathy rather than by style and theory (but still historically savvy and restlessly experimental)."[5] Schnabel was experimenting with what could be considered a painting that way that sculptors’ of his time where experimenting with what could be considered a sculpture. When considered like this, it makes a lot of sense for Schnabel to painting with such unusual materials, and it is surprising that there were not more painters like him.
Raphael Rubinstein brings a compelling argument to the table. It appears that Schnabel was in fact overlooked in his time. The reasons for this lack of attention according to Rubinstein were: His works’ inability to reproduced digitally without there aura being diminished due to scale and the haptic nature of the works, Schnabel’s successful film career and finally his romantic attitude toward painting. To conclude, I agree that perhaps if he had been given more attention in his day, Neo-Expressionism would have evolved differently, with more emphasis on materiality and less on composition and application of traditional painting materials.
Bibliography
Rubinstein, Raphael. “The Big Picture Reconsidering Julian Schnabel.” Art in America, March 2011, 110–19. https://discovery.ebsco.com/c/qc5bq2/viewer/pdf/gtvpkyhx3n.
[1] Rubinstein, Raphael. “The Big Picture Reconsidering Julian Schnabel.” Art in America, March 2011, pg. 111. [2] Ibid. [3] Rubinstein, Raphael. “The Big Picture Reconsidering Julian Schnabel.” Art in America, March 2011, pg. 112 [4] Rubinstein, Raphael. “The Big Picture Reconsidering Julian Schnabel.” Art in America, March 2011, pg. 118 [5] Ibid.