The Artist; Julian Schnabel

The emergence of artist Julian Schnabel as a mythical figure was a phenomenon of the modern art world in the 1980. Enormous canvases filled with vibrant colors and bold strokes typify Schnabel's paintings. With his first exhibition at Mary Boone Gallery in 1980, which launched him into the New York art scene, he gathered a following for his emotion-filled unusual works. By the time he exhibited his work in a show jointly organized by Boone and Leo Castelli in 1981, he had become firmly established, and a clamoring for his neo-expressionist paintings created on and with remarkable surfaces ensued. Schnabel's signature works, both abstract and figurative, have as a base surface either black velvet or broken crockery. Filled with raw emotion, the paintings contain an underlying edge of brutality while still being suffused with energy. Schnabel claims that he's "aiming at an emotional state, a state that people can literally walk into and be engulfed by." The monstrous canvases have elements of collage, yet his arrival as an artist signified the return of painting to an art scene that previously revolved around conceptual and minimalist art.

Schnabel's quick rise to popularity became representative of the money-driven 1980s. His notoriety exemplified the commercialization of the art world that related to the economic boom. Considered heroic, with his charismatic and somewhat eccentric personality--the artist worked in pajamas, slippers, and robe--Schnabel became a superstar in art. Controversially, his persona, carefully hyped, often outshone the artwork itself, which inspired debate by critics as to whether it actually held any artistic merit. To the art-buying public, Schnabel's work was the work to own, and his exhibitions often sold out. A proficient artist who worked quickly, Schnabel once claimed to have sold more than sixty canvases in one year. Typifying the era, many critics judged Schnabel's success as an artist based on the incredible demand for his work. With the recession of the late 1980s and the stabilization of the economy in the 1990s, Schnabel's star faded somewhat.