Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1544028
51 people that bring something with them to this. You watch it happen. You get out of the way, you just set it up and let it happen. We are conspiring together, respiring. We're breathing together in order to create this thing. It's about breath. And, obviously, the fact that Marty Scorsese would be in the Dante film … Or all of these people appearing in Basquiat, from Willem Dafoe to Gary Oldman to Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper. Benicio [Del Toro] was 27 years old when he was in the movie. It was Jeffrey Wright's first job as the main character in the movie. It's a learning p r o c e s s . I t 's n e v e r illustrating what you know; it's always finding out through the making of something. Your Umbrella Pines Plate Paintings are going to be at Château La Coste and throughout t h e p r o p e r t y, a n d highlighted in Pace Gallery's show this May. JS: While I was waiting to find out if [In the Hand of Dante] was going to be in Venice, we were living in Ansedonia in Southern Tuscany, and I made these paintings of the umbrella pine trees that are in Ansedonia and at the Villa Borghese; they dot the maritime coastal. They're very particular, the way the branches grow, the way the bushes assemble themselves, and then the branches keep going to a next set of bushes. The drawings I made in Italy saved my life. They helped me through the process of waiting to see if the film was going to be in Venice or not [it was]. Thank goodness I can paint. The drawings that I made last summer in Ansedonia gave birth to the Plate Paintings that I made in Montauk. I paint them in a very, very different way than I painted the first plate paintings. I think the show at Bob's [Mnuchin Gallery] suggested possibilities that I had no idea could even exist with those first couple of paintings — what they became last summer, when I was actually standing on top of a bunch of broken dishes with a stick and a paintbrush taped to it. I was painting them in the same manner that I made the drawings. I was pressing on the painting, making these marks that looked like a bush, and the accumulation of those became the pine needles of those trees. Parting thought. You have a new and wonderful chapter with Louise. Where did the two of you meet? JS: I was looking for some Scandinavian furniture from the 19th century, and I asked a guy from Denmark if he knew an expert. He put her on the telephone, and we spoke, and we didn't meet till six months later. And that was that — we've been together for 10 years. Upcoming: "Julian Schnabel," Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France, April 25 – August 15, chateau-la-coste.com. "Julian Schnabel: Portrait of Italy Through Its Trees," Pace Gallery, New York, May 11 – August 14, pacegallery.com. In the Hand of Dante will be released in theaters and on Netflix this summer. Julian Schnabel in the group exhibition, "Shaping the Future: Transformative Gifts to the Blanton Collection," Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, March 14 – August 1, 2027, blantonmuseum.org. Clockwise from top: Julian Schnabel in his 19th Street studio, The Heights, Houston 1975. The Sea, 1981, exhibition view, Mnuchin Gallery, New York. Number 6 (Van Gogh Self-Portrait Musée d'Orsay, Vincent), 2020. © JULIAN SCHNABEL STUDIO. PHOTO BY TOM POWEL IMAGING TOM POWEL IMAGING TIM STREET-PORTER