Hanging the Schnabels

True I’m supposed to write about technology, but how often do we get a major international artist, one still at the peak of his fame, to visit our town? Maybe not the personage himself, barring pleasant surprises, but his work — the stuff that made him famous, and his recent paintings. Dammit, it’s Julian Schnabel.

I know even less about Schnabel than I do about new gadgetry, so we should be all right. However, to keep my editors from hurling staplers and other small implements at my head, I will make some forced and obvious attempts to bring in technology.

Julian Schnabel is a rock star of the art world. He burst onto the art scene in the 1970s, when critics were routinely declaring that “Painting is dead.” He appropriates images from the history of art and popular culture, references literature and music, and throws in words seemingly at random.

It was perhaps natural that he move into film. In 1996 he made Basquiat, about his contemporary, the late Jean-Michel Basquiat; Gary Oldman was cast as Julian Schnabel. The late Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas was the subject of his 2000 film Before Night Falls. His 2007 movie The Diving Bell and The Butterfly was based on the memoirs of the late Jean-Dominique Bauby, whose illness left him literally trapped inside his body. The new project is currently filming in Israel.

Arguably Schnabel is more widely known today as a filmmaker than as a painter, but his reputation as an artist is secure. He has a solid, vociferous following in the Philippines. When I mentioned his upcoming shows to various people in the arts I got only two kinds of reacti Some spoke of him disparagingly, some fairly vibrated with joy. This means he’s big.

In Anthony Haden-Guest’s book about the American art scene in the late 20th century, he mentions that before Schnabel was famous he worked as a short-order cook. Before anyone knew who he was, he would manage to get into Studio 54 by convincing the doorman that he was a celebrity.

Schnabel’s prints are not like his movies. “They’re non-representational, nonsensical, gibberish, pure picture-making,” says Valentine Willie, whose gallery Manila Contemporary organized the exhibitions together with Fortune Cookie Projects and the National Museum. “He’s saying, Why should art have meaning?” Valentine adds that Schnabel’s influence is clear in the works of Filipino artists such as Manuel Ocampo and Jonathan Olazo. The Schnabel exhibition in Manila is in two parts: the recent paintings are at the National Museum, the prints are at Manila Contemporary.

The day before the exhibit opened, I invited myself to Manila Contemporary to see the prints being hanged. Immediately I regretted not bringing a getaway car. The prints were spread out on the floor, waiting for the framers to attend to them. I could’ve rolled up several prints and taken off, an easy heist, no planning necessary.

According to Valentine the prints and paintings arrived in a large crate, most of them unmounted. As we watched, they were placed inside glass frames or attached to metal clips and hung from wires. It’s a low-tech operation —hammers, nails, cutters, no different from the way exhibits were arranged in the pre-digital age.

“How easy is it to find these prints?” I asked Valentine. “Could I walk into the gallery that carries Schnabels in New York and ask for these particular pieces?” No, Valentine said, these are from the artist’s personal collection. In March, Valentine Willie Fine Art in Singapore had hosted the first Julian Schnabel show in Southeast Asia.

The artist’s representatives were bringing in the large new paintings which cost upwards of US$400,000. Valentine asked, “Do you have something I could sell?” You can buy one of the large prints for, say, US$27,000. (When the show’s over I will find out how many were sold.)

When we go to art shows everything is already hanging on the walls, as if the paintings had climbed up and arranged themselves. We don’t see the wrapping paper, the sheets of plastic and open toolboxes, we don’t hear the hammering on the walls or see the new partitions going up. Works of art have lives of their own; what are the lives of galleries like? Here’s a pre-show: the clutter that precedes an art exhibition.

These photographs, by the way, were taken with a Kodak Zx1 pocket video camera — it’s designed for making YouTube videos, but it also works as a still camera. There, I mentioned technology.

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Julian Schnabel Prints 1983-1998 is ongoing at Manila Contemporary in Whitespace, 2314 Chino Roces Avenue (Pasong Tamo Extension) across from Mead Johnson, Makati City. The exhibition runs until July 5. For details, call 844-7328.

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Julian Schnabel Recent Work (the paintings) is ongoing at the East Wing Gallery on the 4th floor of the National Museum, Agrifina Circle, Ermita, Manila. The exhibition runs until July 30. For more information, call 527-1215.

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