Julian Schnabel, Numbers 3, 2, 1 (Van Gogh Self-Portrait, Musee d’Orsay, Willem), oil, plates, and Bondo on wood, 2019 (photo courtesy the Brant Foundation)
JULIAN SCHNABEL: SELF-PORTRAITS OF OTHERS
The Brant Foundation
421 East Sixth St.
Through December 30, free, 11:00 am – 5:00 or 7:00 pm
www.pacegallery.com
www.brantfoundation.org
“I have always thought anything could be a model for a painting: someone else’s painting, your own painting, a smudge of dirt,” artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel explains about his current exhibition, “Self-Portraits of Others,” continuing at the Brant Foundation through December 30. The show was inspired by his discovery, while directing the 2018 Vincent van Gogh biopic At Eternity’s Gate, which starred Willem Dafoe as the Impressionist during the last years of his life in Arles, that van Gogh made different versions of his own works. “I thought I would be in concert with him if I turned the props I had made of Willem for the film into a real painting of mine. Once I embarked on that, I realized I needed to make not one painting of Willem as Vincent, but three, and then I needed in turn to make three of Vincent as Vincent. So, I made not only a painting of my painting but had to make a painting of Vincent’s painting too!” Schnabel adds.
The result is a collection of twenty-five works, made of oil paint, broken plates, and the adhesive Bondo, spread over several floors in which Schnabel depicts Dafoe as Vincent, Vincent as Vincent, Frida Kahlo as Frida Kahlo, his son Cy as Caravaggio as the head of Goliath (David with the Head of Goliath), actor Oscar Isaac as a self-portrait of Caravaggio, Cy as a self-portrait of Velazquez, and, finally, Cy as Titian’s portrait of Jesus.
While it is only possible to capture the overall impact of the painting from a distance, especially when viewed through a camera, up-close inspection reveals the remarkable lengths Schnabel went to in order to create the (self) portraits, meticulously and painstakingly painting over the broken plates, a process he has used since the late 1970s and includes a series of portraits of industrialist and magazine publisher Peter Brant and his children in 2011. The show combines art history with pop culture by a visual artist who has built a film career writing and directing works about other artists: painter and musician Jean-Michel Basquiat (Basquiat), author Reinaldo Arenas (Before Night Falls), French writer Jean-Dominique Bauby (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and musician Lou Reed (Lou Reed’s Berlin) in addition to van Gogh.