Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1544028
scheduled. Our profile below is taken from that Zoom with Schnabel. We reached the artist, characteristically pajama-clad, at his grand Palazzo Chupi residence and studio in the West Village, a Big Girl Painting as backdrop to our dialogue and a painting stick as staff in his hand. Catherine D. Anspon: Your Plate Painting survey at Mnuchin Gallery attracted tremendous attention. How meaningful was this show to you? Julian Schnabel: Bob Mnuchin was a special man, and he's someone whom I made three exhibitions with over the years. The gallery's last exhibition, the Plate Painting show [Julian Schnabel: Plate Paintings, 1978–2025], ended on January 31. He had said to me, "If I could make a show of your Plate Paintings before I die, I would go out as a happy guy. I'd like to show the world how great I think these paintings are. I want to paraphrase, because he said, "How great Schnabel is." [Schnabel's show was Mnuchin Gallery's final exhibition after the founder's death.] When he hung the paintings on the walls [at Mnuchin Gallery] … I felt good about the context and about the way they looked, and about how those paintings commented on other people's paintings. It felt very satisfying to be included in the canon of what American painting is. Obviously, an artist may be dead, but the paintings are alive, and we transgress death by making these things. They're all in concert with each other. That was a good experience, and I loved Bob's enthusiasm. Michael McGuinness, who worked with him, did a great job on the layout and selecting the paintings with my son, Vito. That was nice, and it was up for a while, from November 6 until January 31. Seeing the paintings in person is very different from the Internet. Painting is a physical activity, and the things that you make are tangible. You can go up and look at them, or touch them, or be with them. Each time you see one, it has an effect on you. I always say that the last time you see something is the first time you see it. Winston Churchill used to say you can't read a book when you're too young. It takes a while for people to get perspective. Looking at your trajectory as an artist: Were the Plate Paintings after you moved to New York the real beginning? JS: No. First of all, there's a painting I made on 19th Street in the Houston Heights called Jack the Bellboy from 1975, and that painting is in the show at the Château La Coste. When I first made that, I didn't want to paint on something where somebody had pre-decided the thickness, what size it would be, something that was generic. I had to make it into a receiver for something that was particularly resonant to me. I covered it with Rhoplex [acrylic binder] and modeling paste and joint compound and made these "We transgress death by making these things." — Julian Schnabel Julian Schnabel with War (Mexican Painting) in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, 1986 PAMELA BARKENTIN 47