Julian Schnabel at Hillsboro Fine Art 2009

Tipped off by a friend on MySpace, I learned that an exhibition of works on paper by Julian Schnabel was on its last day of display in the Hillsboro Fine Art gallery, which specialized in 20^th Century and Contemporary Art. So on Saturday 10^th October, at 9:45am, I left my house full of excitement and travelled into town on the bus over-flowing with expectation. I had hoped Carol would join me but she had to sleep after a night of collaging.                                                                                                      

Hillsboro Fine Art, was directly opposite the Rotunda Hospital’s new entrance on Parnell Square. However when I arrived at the gallery at 10:30am - when it was due to open - I found the door locked and the galleries lights off. In desperation, I rang the intercom three times and then knocked on the door three times, before realizing there was no one there. From the window, I could see a beautiful Schnabel painting on paper - under glass and framed in a lovely black frame. I was so close and yet so far!                                                            

I decided to go to Chapters bookshop in order to kill sometime - where I bought a small book on Egon Schiele. Then I went back to the gallery at 11am but it was still closed! So I went down to Easons’ to look around. It was absolutely packed with news people, photographers and slack-jawed heavy-metal fans, pressed around to see Ozzy Osbourne who was signing books. I saw the back of his head as he signed autographs but I felt contemptuous of the whole circus. I went to McDonalds and had a Big Mac meal, which I loved.                                                                                                                                       

Then I went back to the Hillsboro gallery only to find it still closed at 12pm. I was just about to leave when a gallery woman came and unlocked the door. “Eh, is the exhibition still open to view?” I asked her desperately. “Eh, yes you can come in, but I am only here to receive a delivery.” She replied in a kindly manner. “Oh, thank you! I’m not a collector, I’m just an artist but I came into town especially to the Schnabel’s! I am a huge Schnabel fan!” I exclaimed. She let me into the gallery and turned on the lights.                                                                                                         

Apart from Schnabel’s works, the exhibition New York Contemporary included small paintings on canvas by Ross Bleckner, Donald Baechler, David Salle and Jeff Schneider - none of which I was very impressed by - in fact I could think of countless Irish painters who had shown better works in Dublin in recent years. But, I was delighted and enthralled, by the Neo-Abstract-Expressionist Schnabel works on view.                                                                                                                

He was represented by about six hand-painted screen-prints, with resin dripped on them. They dated from 1995 and came from editions of 80. In fact, despite the fact they were in part screen-prints, Schnabel’s personality oozed from them. Again, I was struck by the Joie de Vivre of Schnabel’s Neo-Salon brand of Expressionism and its total lack of angst. The colours were bold and strong – fuchsia pinks, cobalt blues, and darker blues and burnt reds - brushed on in semi-thick, textured, gestural strokes - around which he wrote words like; La Blusa Rosa, Otono, Mujer, Invierno, and Primaveral’ which gave the works their titles. The works reflected Schnabel’s new life with his Spanish wife Olatz and his visits to Spain that year. They were inspired works, which relied on Schnabel’s subconscious manipulation of forms and materials. They reminded me of late Miró canvases that mixed surrealism with the sale and effects of Abstract-Expressionism and the later works of Cy Twombly with their ad-hoc mixture of classical words and abstract scribbles of paint. The largest pieces like La Blusa Rosa I were about 40” x 32” where as the others were slightly smaller at about 40” x 30.” They were all works on stiff watercolour paper of an average quality. Dripped and pooled on the paper, was thick golden looking resin, in anthropomorphic shapes, which proved very effective and suggestive of phalluses or torsos. Even if to the uninitiated, his work could have looked slap-dash, haphazard and crude - I was struck by the artfulness within the apparent chaos of Schnabel’s work. I found his abstract works emotionally engaging and his brushwork skilful and measured. He just had a knack for making beautiful splashes and swirls of paint - which evoked thoughts of places and people.                                                                            

There was also a colour lithograph based on a black and white photo of his stunningly beautiful wife Olatz. She looked out of the picture with a sultry stare, with her hands behind the back of her head - above which he had crudely painted in white My Wife. It was merely a family snapshot, given the professional artists gloss, of a fine art print enhancement and glorification. It was factory made Expressionism and the weakest work on show. The work was the 31st print, of an edition of 2000, and was selling for €2, 500! The more ambitious pieces were not priced. Despite the worst economic depression in Ireland since the 1930s, I was astonished to find all the Schnabel works had sold – though I agreed with the buyers and only wished I had that kind of money.                                                                

Also in the show were works by Jeff Schneider who used a cowboy motif repeatedly, but his efforts looked little-better than a young graduates efforts. There were a couple of black and white paintings in oils by Donald Baechler, which I liked, but did not think they added up to much.                    

            

I looked around to find the David Salle works but could not recognize them. Ross Bleckner was represented by two small oil still-life’s of flowers in a kind of fuzzy Post-Impressionistic style which left bare linen underneath to add to the fuzziness. I thought them utterly redundant works. So I concentrated my last few minutes looking again at the Schnabel’s and for once I was consumed with the desire to own art. I thanked the woman and left soaring on air as I walked back through the city.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Later in the week on Friday 8^th - I went with Carol to see the showing of Julian Schnabel's new film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007.) As you know Schnabel was a massive hero of mine – I knew almost all his paintings - I had seen his two excellent previous films (Basquait (1996) which was about the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat and Before Night Falls (2000) which was about the Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas) and I had read literally hundreds of reviews on his exhibitions. So when I heard he would be giving a Q&A after the film I had to be there. The night before the film I was in the pits of despair. I wondered if I would have the courage to ask him anything. I wondered what I could say. I wondered what he might make of my work if I showed him it. Then I recalled what I had written of him – the praise and the critique. I knew he’d like the former and hate the latter. Which only served to depress me even more. So by the time I got to the Irish Film Centre - I was in a full-blown self-loathing and self-important panic. Fortunately the film was wonderful and a salutary lesson on how we should always remember there are many people in the world far worse off than ourselves – not that that old simplistic truism ever seems to help anyone except those that like to lecture.                                 

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, a French language film – was based on the book by the same name - by Jean-Dominique Bauby (often called Jean-Do by his friends in the film.) Bauby was the elegant jet-setting editor of the French Elle fashion magazine in Paris in the 1990s. He was married with two children (in the film there are three because Schnabel said two children seemed too lonely and the little girl was too cute not to put in the movie) and lived a carefree life of parties and mistresses.                                                                                                                                      

Then suddenly at the age of forty-three, he had a massive stroke - which left him paralyzed from head to toe. The film started at the point when Bauby woke up from a coma - and discovered he could not move or speak or even swallow. We saw what he saw through his eyes. He was told he had ‘Locked-In-Syndrome’. To add insult to injury his right eye - had to be sown up for fear it might become infected - leaving only his left eye open and able to blink. So most of the film was scene from Bauby’s point of view – literally – when he blinked the camera blinked - and we spent the film looking up at people who loom in and out of view. The effect was terrifying but never melodramatic. This of course could have been a nightmare of a film to watch. But Bauby’s humour never left him and he fell back on his memories and imagination to pass the long ‘locked-in’ hours.                                        

Bauby’s beautiful therapist taught him to how to communicate with the world by blinking. But he was as interested in looking at the lovely therapist as communicating messages to the world.  She recited the alphabet and he blinked when she arrived at the letter he was thinking of and she wrote it down. So throughout the film the French alphabet was recited - and it took on a tragic, lyrical and bittersweet quality.                                                                                                  

Placed in this unimaginable prison of the body he called the Diving Bell – Bauby’s decided to write a book on his life – if only to give himself a task to concentrate on and distract him from the sorrow, boredom and fear of his condition. Thus the film weaved in and out of memory, fantasy and reality as Dauby - was condemned to see it. We learnt about his old beloved father, his put-upon wife, his mistress and his precious children – none of whom he could hold or touch.                                      

Unlike Schnabel’s previous films – The Diving Bell and The Butterfly never descended into mawkish sentimentality. Bauby became a kind of everyman in this film – dealing with the terror of illness, death and nothingness that we will all face in the end. This was not your usual vomit-inducing Hallmark Channel story of disability – for one thing there was no miracle cure - and Bauby died ten days after his book was published. However it was still a film of hope – that we are all part of something larger – that there is some meaning to our personal trials. It was notable that later in the talk Schnabel said that he thought art could never be pessimistic even when it dealt with the darkest themes - because creativity was always somewhat optimistic.  As with Schnabel’s previous films - I was struck by the visual beauty and quirkiness of his storytelling in both imagery and dialog – though I was a bit annoyed to see him yet again stick his own paintings and sculptures and photographs of his children in all over the place for no apparent reason.                      

                                                       

Afterwards Schnabel came into the auditorium and gave a brief Q&A with John Kelly from The View arts programme on RTÉ 1. Julian had a big black winter coat on covering up his caramel coloured jacket under which he was wearing pyjamas - in a deep, rich, shade of purple he often uses in his canvases. His hair was longish and wild and his beard thick. He had a pair of yellow tinted black glasses on - and a green scarf wrapped around his neck.  Someone asked him why he wore pyjamas he said something about it being like a suit and yet more comfortable. I thought he did it to be different. Everyone needs a gimmick.                                                                                                  

Then some batty woman asked him what he was going to do about the plight of all the old people in care homes in a similar state! What more was he supposed to do? He had just spent two years making this film to give shape to this kind of human tragedy and not in the usual glib: “I do a lot of work of charity” - kind of bullshit way. But Schnabel deflected the question very diplomatically and said his next film would be about the lives of Palestinian women.                                           

In fact, the Julian Schnabel I saw was not the brash arrogant Yuppie I had seen and read in interviews in from the 1980s. Perhaps the critical lashing of his reputation as a painter non-stop for over twenty years - and the death of his mother and father recently had lead him to a far more human understanding of himself and his life – maybe he just grew up. Though, I had to smile a little when I heard him give out about his daughter Stella who is a poet and actress. She was having a strop and Schnabel cut her up: “Stop feeling entitled to everything! The world doesn’t owe you a living! I still love you! Call me when you change your attitude!” Or something to that affect. He was basically attacking an egotistical flaw in her character he had been castigated for possessing - by art critics like Robert Hughes, Donald Kuspit and Brian Sewell in the 1980s. However I thought Schnabel must have been a great father to have – he spoke with real tenderness of his five children and gave special attention to a young boy called Noah in the audience. I wondered what my life would have been like if my father had lived.                                                                                                            

Near the very end, I tried to ask a question by timidly raising my hand. But thankfully I was not picked. When the talk was finished – I lunged up to Schnabel in a panic. “Julian! Julian can you sign my copy of CVJ?” (CVJ was Schnabel’s autobiography of 1987 - which I had bought in 1992 and cherished ever since.) “Yeah sure!” He replied cautiously. “I’m sorry it’s a bit battered!” I apologized. “Don’t worry that means you read it!” He replied. I could hardly bring myself to look him in the eye – I was so terrified. “I fucking love your work! You’re a Hero of mine!” I proclaimed – but still unable to look at him full on. “Gosh thanks.” He replied rather bemused. “I have a new signature I am using.” He said “Oh right cool!” I replied. “Eh I don’t have a pen, have you a pen?” He asked. “Yes! Yes!” I replied - handing him a thick black permanent marker. “What’s your name?” “Eh, Cy… Cypher.” I stammered. “Cypher with an i or a y?” “Eh a y.” I replied almost trembling. He signed on the front cover of CVJ: ‘To Cypher From Baby Pint 08’. “Thank you so much!” I replied. I had brought two of my catalogues in to maybe show or give him - but I quickly decided not to. I did not want to spoil the moment. I didn’t want the rejection – not from him. I fled.             

Some girl asked him something and he said: “Ask Cypher! You two should exchange numbers!” But my head was swimming and all I wanted to do was run away. But then the line to get out of the cinema was so long that I was stuck in the line near him! He was talking to the little boy Noah and saying he would try to get him a poster and sign it. “I don’t usually like posters, I want people to but my paintings!” He told the boy. “You know this is my first time in Dublin I like it!” He said to someone else. Later outside I saw him with friends as I came back from the toilets - but I could not even look at him. My girlfriend took some great photographs of him signing my book.                       

That night I was plunged again into utter despair thinking of everything Schnabel had achieved compared to me. I thought about how; so many of my paintings - were nothing but brazen rip-offs of his various styles – except without his scale, originality or ambition. Then I thought about how utterly selfish and self-obsessed I was - and how little I contributed to society and the lives of other people. Then I thought about the disease of fame and my own sickness. But the following day I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. There were few other people in the world I would care to meet and that at least for the sake of my nerves was a good thing.

Alice Maher and Ellen Gallagher

In October 2007, I saw - two important exhibitions of art by women in Dublin. Usually I would not even bother going to these - but Carol as an art student naturally loved female artists. Apart from a few decent artists like Kahlo, O'Keeffe, Bourgeois, Rego, Emin and Gallagher - I had no real interest in women's art. Their concerns were not my concerns, their styles are not my favourites and their over-hyped political promotion made me sick. However, I didn't hate their work anymore than that of 99% of all the male artists I knew.

           

I am had by now become reluctant to write about these shows because I either felt fatigued at the prospect - or I was worried about the knee-jerk emails from women in response to my personal opinions and jokes. In my experience my readers would listen to me berating male artists work for pages - but if I said boo to a female artist – in their eyes I was a meat eating, war mongering, racist and misogynist. It was all so juvenile, humourless and the product of self-interest - for me ever to respond to these attacks.

             

If there was a theme running through my whole writing on art it at this time – it was a belief that there was such a thing as great art - usually because of history that meant male artists - but every year - more and more genuinely great female artists were emerging. On Internet sites like deviantart and mypace - I had found far more talented up and coming female artists than men - in fact, it was a eight to two ratio. Moreover I adored that fact that my girlfriend was such a talented and passionate graphic designer and by then a fine art student - and I loved being able to give her advice and support her art. There was no sex war in our house we both thought it all a joke.

             

So anyway on the first weekend of October - I went with my girlfriend to The National Gallery of Ireland - were we saw a wonderful exhibition of portrait drawings. Gems by Antonio Pollaiuolo, Francesco Bonsignori, Jean-Dominique Ingres, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Adolf Menzel, Augustus John and William Orpen and Paul Klee delighted us both. This was real drawing, real art and real skill and imagination at work. However, I could not say the same for the Alice Maher's exhibition of charcoal and pencil drawings at the RHA.

             

The Night Garden by Maher - was an exhibition inspired by Bosch's painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. Maher had been exhibiting in Ireland and abroad since the 1990s - to some minor success.

             

Putting aside the smug hubris of this woman to think herself an interpreter of Bosch - the show was poster and wallpaper art of the most boring and contrived kind. I was sure she was a lovely woman, I was sure she was sincere, I was sure she was very clever - but a true artist born to create? I thought not. I thought art was merely an easy social option for her. She had talent - but no real originality or passion. It was all too similar to the art made by countless female professors of fine art in art schools across the Western World - dry, derivative, smug, and myopic.

             

As usual, her work was well made, well meaning, diligent but utterly lacking even a flicker of the-sacred-fire. There was no mystery or originality in Maher’s work - just cliché. Her black and white drawings in charcoal and the various works inspired by them seemed far too similar to the greater and more original drawings of Francesco Clemente who had practically reinvented the symbolic figure in Western art in the late 1970s (after a prolonged silencing of the language of the body by abstract art and conceptualism.) However, Maher's work had none of the beauty or enigma of the Italian. Once again Maher's work struck me as academic, contrived and riddled with a rag-bag of Feminist art clichés (long female hair, animals, breasts, breast feeding, menstruation, the moon, the sun, plant forms and so on) derived from more original and heartfelt artists like Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Eva Hesse, Nancy Spero Kiki Smith and Louise Bourgeois. It was looking at works like these that made me quite happy not to write for a newspaper - and be forced to write about artists like Maher.

             

You know I saw the original Bosch painting in the Prado in 2004 - it is big (it’s about eight feet high and seven and a half feet wide when it is side panels are closed over) and it had burned into my very soul and set my pulse racing. It is quite simply one of the greatest paintings I have ever seen. Bosch’s depiction of male and female nudes is skilful and delightful, his painting of animals entrancing, his musical instruments and grotesque but stylish monsters enigmatic, his colours are so strong and evocative, and the whole panel teems with minute details and beasts conjured from his imagination. A man or woman could sit and look at this painting for an hour a day till they died - and still find new mysteries, details and insights. It took me a brisk walk around of ten minutes to drain Maher's work of all its aesthetic interest. The Bosch painting was an Atom-Bomb of a painting still radiating after nearly five centuries - in contrast Maher's brand-new vast charcoal work (taking up practically the whole of the RHA) was an unexploded dud!

            

Then on the bank holiday weekend at the tail end of October - we went to Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane to see Coral Cities - an exhibition of paintings, collages and craved paper by Ellen Gallagher. Carol was a huge fan of Gallagher's work since it had so many elements of collage in it - for it was my girlfriend’s first love.

             

However, I went with my critical dagger drawn ready to cut her down to size. I suspected that Ellen Gallagher - a beautiful mixed race American (her mother Irish American her absent father an African American) was nothing more than a mascot for a politically correct art world - more concerned with identity than artistic quality. Add to that the growing tendency of Irish museums to rope in any major artist abroad with the vaguest link to Ireland - and you might understand my scepticism.

             

When I had seen her work in reproduction it had looked like timid, boring, art-school stuff. But I had never had a chance to see her work in reality - and that I was soon to learn - was crucial to judging Gallagher's art.

             

As we entered the first room, my heart sank as I looked around and saw large apparently blank white sheets of watercolour paper. However, as I got up close to them my heart jumped for joy. She had cut and carved into the paper - creating highly detailed and well-drawn (or well-carved) images of fish, octopuses and African women's heads with wild flowing hair. In my experience, there are few artists whose work reproduces so badly in print. That is no reflection on the skills of her photographers - merely an indication of how subtle her effects are.

             

These works were quite simply some of the most beautiful, gentle, inventive and skilled contemporary work on paper I have seen in years. I had such a compelling desire to gently run my fingers over her carved, cut, water-coloured and collaged works on high quality watercolour paper. I wanted to share a drink with her - and just listen to her talk. Like a great flirt - Gallagher knew how to say just enough to gain your interest - and had the control to leave you waiting in baited breath - for more.

             

If you wanted me to get heavy handed - I could have said that work dealt with themes of African American women's desire to look white or the subtle forms of self-racism the oppressed sometimes inflict upon themselves. However, that would make her work sound too rhetorical and aggressive. Looking at her work, I was reminded of the wise and softly spoken poetry of Mya Angelo - not the aggressive heroics of Jean-Michel Basquiat or the Feminist screaming of The Guerrilla Girls.

             

Some art works shout at you - Gallagher's whisper to you: "Come here I want to tell you a secret.” Her work reminded me of Georgian flower and plant watercolours, Outsider art, Marlene Dumas watercolour nudes, Chris Ofili's intricately patterned and collaged paintings and many other female artists interested in natural forms and female identity like Nancy Spero. However, at no time did I feel she was pastishing or plagiarizing others - her own vision was consistent throughout. Yes, her art was identity art - but she had so much more to say about life than just what colour her skin was. I quickly sheathed my weapon and bowed in homage.

             

Gallagher's work had a wonderfully obsessive and secretive quality. There was none of the tedious narcissism of Tracey Emin, none of the boring repetition of Rachel Whiteread, none of the bogus Feminist rant of Barbara Kruger or Jenny Holzer and none of the attention seeking of well - take your pick of exhibitionist female artists of my day. Although Gallagher had private schooling and a fairly easy road to the top of the New York art world (in 1995 she was shown in the Whitney Biennial - aged only thirty - and two years later she was a Gagosian artist) I felt her art was truly self-driven and not reliant on the world around her - I knew that success or failure would not stop her need to create.

             

After we had gone around the show once - Carol pleaded: "Do you want to go around again?" "Yes sure!" I replied. So we looked over the work afresh - still enthralled by this wonderful woman's discrete and highly skilled works. Was she a great artist up there with the best of the past twenty years - I thought so - but then that didn’t really say much. These days were truly awful times for contemporary art.  However, I looked forward to watching her understated and very intelligent and compassionate art develop.