Before he became known globally for his work as a filmmaker (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
), Julian Schnabel was a painter of works sometimes as large as a movie screen. Although a book cannot replicate the experience of seeing these paintings in person, the book spreads the nearly 200 reproductions generously over its thick glossy pages, each receiving a double-page spread, captioned with just title and date. To give a sense of scale, the book occasionally interrupts a series of paintings with a photograph of the work in location. Eight short essays rush to the defense of their subject, so that his early success with collectors and in the medium of film doesn't tarnish reception of his work. Painter David Salle writes: “What set his work apart was his use of fragmented, physically demanding surface, which gave his vision of free association a kind of flickering, tentative quality that insists on the materiality of the painting.” An expanded time line at the end of the book does the work of biography while the essays provide segues into the work itself: an interview with Schnabel, a meditation on experience by William Gaddis, a survey of Schnabel's monumental surfing paintings and more. (Mar.)
