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S chnabel is incontestably the art lion of our time — and one with ties to Texas. Growing up in Brownsville, he graduated from the University of Houston in 1973 and had his first museum show at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in 1976. A decade later, he triumphantly returned with an ambitious painting survey that began at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; traveled to the Pompidou, Paris; then touched down at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1988. Often engendering envy and always making headlines for his stance, Schnabel's talent charged into the bullish 1980s with riotous plate paintings that defined the brash energy of the era — works that are now ensconced in the canon of modern art. Within the last two decades, he has branched out from the studio into Baroque-inspired furnishings and interiors, most famously for the Gramercy Park Hotel, and, above all, an acclaimed turn as a film director. His riveting Basquiat set the standard for artist biopics; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director; and the critically acclaimed Before Night Falls put Javier Bardem on the map. But as he divulged during our Q&A, painting is still his first love. You have shows coming up in London and at Gagosian New York, but let's focus on Dallas. Tell us about the title: "An Artist Has A Past (Puffy Clouds and Strong Cocktails)." What happened is I was thinking about my mother and when she was going into hospice care, and so I thought, 'Well, I think it's time to read John Milton, look at some puffy clouds and have some strong cocktails.' That's something that most people can identify with. With kind of a nice day, you just look up at the sky and have one of those moments. How did the show come together? Was it because of a friendship with Peter Doroshenko? I didn't know Peter before. He was just interested in my work, and he talked to me about having a show. So, I liked him. I thought it was a good idea. And I looked at the space, and I thought it would be a good show about good clean paintings and enough of them around. Maybe that's where, with the large pictures, people could get a sense of what my interest is — what the focus of my painting has been since the beginning of the new century. Let's talk about your Texas connections. Jack Lane, the former director of the Dallas Museum of Art — he was a big supporter of my work … Well, Houston always has a special place in my heart. I mean, I liked the show a lot that I had at MFAH, and now you've got Gary Tinterow from the Met … He's been to the studio. But I'm very happy to be doing this in Dallas. I lived there pretty anonymously a long time ago for a couple of months [in the 1970s]. Yeah, it was when I thought I would maybe go to SMU, but it didn't work out … You know, Houston was an interesting part of my life, and a lot of my friends from Houston are still friends of mine. They GUESS WHO'S BACK IN TEXAS? live in Hawaii, guys I surfed with like Jack Lutey and some other people I met when we used to go down and surf at Padre Island when I was a teenager. What artists throughout history inspire you? It's not what I think about everyday. I mean, on the one hand I always think about Caravaggio and Velázquez … always in the back of my mind, what I think about when I think of good painting. But, in a sense, I don't know how relevant that is. I think what might make more sense is talking about what the show is about. What are you planning for the Dallas Contemporary. A lot of the work has to do with printing, and a lot of the images have been printed on polyester. And I've always selected images from different geographical or ethnic kinds of places. As early as the '80s, they're ethnic-type paintings with catalogs of things that bring in a kind of world view that breaks down the chauvinism of American painting in a way … There are some paintings that came out of these X-rays that I found from 1911 when I was shooting the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly … I always try to find different ways of putting paint down on different types of surfaces where there was some kind of a battle between what was pictorial and what was object-like, and the distance between those physical facts and the things that are pictorial. If you could live anywhere, in any time period that you really connect with … Actually, I think [today] is fine. I travel in time all of the time anyway, and I can always go back. I mean, if I made a movie about Caravaggio, I could go back to his time. Is that a future film? Yes, I think I would probably do that with Javier Bardem in a few years. What's next on your plate? I'm having a show in London, and the one with Larry [Gagosian] in New York on April 17 is important. There's a little book of 500 paintings coming out called Draw A Family … there are a lot of different plans. I just didn't feel like making a movie for a while. I've been painting, and I've got a lot of paintings to show. I've also been working on a script based on a book by Nick Tosches that's owned by Johnny Depp; it's called In the Hand of Dante, and it's a great book. And I have a little baby! I have a son that's eight months old … He's called Shooter (a perfect Texas name) Sandhed (which means "truth" in Danish) Julian [Schnabel Jr.]. And what about your fiancée? May is in Denmark right now. She's making a movie there. And she also made the first version of Brothers there in Denmark. Now, where do your pajamas come from? You can order them online from Olatz, my ex-wife's store [olatz.com]. "HOPEFULLY THE SHOW IN DALLAS WILL OPEN UP A SET OF POSSIBILITIES FOR YOUNG PAINTERS ..." STEVE CLUTE BY TOM POWEL IMAGING Julian Schnabel with Alison de Lima Greene and Jack Eby, circa 1988, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Julian Schnabel's Untitled (Goodbye Mike Kelley), 2012 Julian Schnabel's Buckwheat Pillow, 2005 Julian Schnabel's Theory of Relativity, 2007 Julian Schnabel HOMECOMINGKING CATHERINE D. ANSPON HAS A CHAT WITH ONE OF THE WHITE-HOT ART STARS OF OUR TIME — JULIAN SCHNABEL — ON THE OCCASION OF HIS FIRST AMERICAN MUSEUM EXHIBITION IN 25 YEARS. AND IT'S AT THE DALLAS CONTEMPORARY, OPENING FRIDAY, APRIL 11. Julian Schnabel's Untitled (Goya), 2007 "JULIAN SCHNABEL: AN ARTIST HAS A PAST (PUFFY CLOUDS AND STRONG COCKTAILS) — 15 PAINTINGS OVER THE LAST DECADE" at the Dallas Contemporary April 11 – August 10 dallascontemporary.org FOR MORE SCHNABEL AROUND THE GLOBE, INVESTIGATE SOLOS AT: Karma, New York, through April 26 karmakarma.org Gagosian Gallery, New York (Chelsea) April 17 – May 31, gagosian.com Dairy Art Centre, London April 25 – July 27, dairyartcentre.org.uk RG35-182: RG35: ARCHIVES DEPARTMENT, MFAH ARCHIVE