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Julian Schnabel poses with the sweatshirt from his latest film, 'In the Hand of Dante'. Antonio Macarro
The winter sun bathes Donostia.
The city dawns cut off by its popular marathon, so our date with Julian Schnabel (New York, 72 years old) is restricted to the María Cristina hotel, which hosts the stars during the film festival and where the award-winning filmmaker and star artist, survivor of the brilliant and tragic generation of Keith Haring or Jean-Michel Basquiat, has lived the odd spree.
“Think that I lived in this city for a few years [with his second wife, the former San Sebastian model Olatz López Garmendia], and I practically acted as an ambassador with many actors and artists.
“He would take them out to drink and have
pintxos
,” he says as a welcome, almost without having time to turn on the recorder.
Schnabel has not visited the city for eight years and, although he regrets that "many things have been destroyed in order to modernize them, such as this hotel, the Bretxa Market or the Tabakalera, where I did an exhibition when it was in ruins before I will be transformed into a horrible art center”, good memories prevail.
“Like when he cooked at home for Milagros, the woman who fed us so well at the San Martín restaurant.
Or when he invited friends during the film festival: Benicio del Toro, Lou Reed, Ben Gazzara, Max von Sydow, Willem Dafoe, Dennis Hopper... Here I introduced Javier Bardem and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Robert De Niro was crazy about the boar when he came.
We vacuum packed it for him so he could sneak it in his suitcase... And now it turns out they've put a Nobu here!
[the luxury Japanese fusion hotel and restaurant chain of which Robert De Niro is a partner].
Did you know?".
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On a walk with Julian Schnabel for his frustrated exhibition in Malaga due to the transport strike
The bombardment of famous names with which he likes to conquer his interlocutors precedes him.
His reputation for surliness, too.
But the monster that many paint disappears almost instantly.
Schnabel receives him in his
suite
as if he had just fallen out of bed, with his imposing figure wrapped in a white jumpsuit stained with paint and wearing half-ripped canvas sneakers.
It is the same
look
with which he will go a couple of days later to the Guggenheim in Bilbao to collect the inspiration award given to him by SundanceTV;
an informal image, that of a disorganized genius who escaped from the workshop, which has been part of his character for decades, along with his alter ego: Schnabel dressed in the silk pajamas designed by his ex-wife, Olatz López Garmendia, and that he was pioneer in taking to the streets.
Schnabel has met with López Garmendia and their common children, twins Olmo and Cy, 30, to eat at one of their favorite restaurants next to La Concha beach.
Olmo and Cy are the fourth and fifth of her seven offspring;
The last one, born just two years ago, was with his third wife, the Swedish interior designer and writer Louise Kugelberg.
Schnabel boasts that success, for him, is in how well his progeny coexist.
For now, everyone, from the star gallery owner Vito Schnabel, to his daughters Lola – painter and director – and Stella Madrid – actress and poet – have followed the path of creative professions that they saw at home.
Julian Schnabel poses for ICON at the Villa Magdalena art gallery in San Sebastián.
Julian Schnabel poses for ICON at the Villa Magdalena art gallery in San Sebastián.
Schnabel spearheaded what is known as the return of painting: canvases that dealt with universal themes – obsession, death – with neo-expressionist energy and on a spectacular scale.
In 1979, his first exhibition at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York opened with all the works sold.
In 1981 he debuted in the space of Leo Castelli, the legendary dealer of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Bruce Nauman, and polarized the scene again.
“Many hated me out of envy, because Castelli had not hired a new artist in 10 years,” he says today.
His swift triumph and taste for
glamor
are part of his legend.
A certain Schnabel represents the eighties so much that, in
Wall Street
– the 1987 film that condensed the fabulous and perverse influx of financial millionaires – it was he whom Oliver Stone called as an artistic advisor to choose the works for the floors and the offices of the protagonists: a painting by Schnabel hangs in the postmodern apartment that Daryl Hannah decorates for Charlie Sheen's character.
Those men were not fooling around.
When, two years after signing, Schnabel abandoned Castelli for the powerful Pace Gallery, the gallery owner told
The New York Times
that Schnabel wanted to be “the King Kong of art.
He is arrogant, absorbed by his own ego.”
Feared
Time
critic Robert Hughes wrote: “Schnabel is to art what Stallone is to acting, only Schnabel puts on more airs.”
Today, although his work is part of the collections of international institutions such as the Metropolitan, the MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Reina Sofía or the Pompidou, the echo of those criticisms still haunts him.
How is he handling it?
He laughs, although he seems unamused.
“You can't get that shit off your back.
Throughout my life I have read so much garbage... I don't feel like I have to answer to anyone, although if there is an answer, it is always the same: keep doing what I feel like.
“As an artist, if you betray your authorship, you cease to exist.”
In his case, this authorship has translated into a diverse production: an autobiography published at the age of 35, a
country
album following the lessons of friends like Bruce Springsteen or Bono, from U2, or decorating the Gramercy Park hotel like a theatrical stage. , in New York, for
boutique hotel
inventor
and Studio 54 co-founder Ian Schrager.
The conversation with Schnabel follows the flow of his thoughts.
He listens to the questions and responds at will.
She sits the journalist next to him, cell phone in hand, to show and comment on an extensive
dossier
with a history of his exhibitions that she wants to be screened during the gala at the Guggenheim.
Along the way, her paternal vein comes out.
“Do you know that Cy has a gallery here, in what was my old studio?
You have to go see her, she is doing a great job.
Let's see if she doesn't catch him sleeping,” and she interrupts the conversation to call him, unsuccessfully, on the phone.
She then calls Olatz, her mother: “Wake up Cy, I want a journalist to go see him.”
Villa Magdalena, the place where Cy Schnabel has opened her gallery, is a hamlet on the slopes of Mount Igueldo where her family vacationed.
The space occupies an old garage that preserves the charm of the original stone walls.
In the end, we convinced the father to pose there the next day.
“Cy she is also opening a gallery in Mexico.
We maintain a strong connection with Mexico.
I have been coming down since the sixties, and we keep a house in Playa Troncones, on the Pacific coast.
I go there to surf and paint,” she says, and she takes the opportunity to praise the beaches of Gros, Getaria or Zarautz, where she also used to catch waves.
“Surfing is like painting: you have to know how to let yourself be carried away by the wave.
It’s a feeling that happens so quickly that you just want to repeat it over and over again,” she says, still looking at the screen.
Julian Schnabel turns his back on ICON.
Julian Schnabel poses for ICON in San Sebastián with a sweatshirt that bears the title of his latest film.Antonio Macarro
Schnabel's relationship with Spain dates back to 1978. Walking through Barcelona's Park Güell, he had a revelation when he saw “those Gaudí's continuous benches made of broken ceramics [his famous trencadís].
From there I went to eat at a crappy fish restaurant decorated with tiles on the walls.
And I couldn't get the idea out of my head: what happens if I break a couple of white plates and stick them on a base that serves as a canvas?
Upon his return to New York, he made his first painting with broken plates embedded in polyester resin, the technique that catapulted him.
He was 27 years old.
“At that time he was a cook.
I would do the shopping at five in the afternoon, take it to the restaurant, spend the evening cooking and, around two in the morning, I would return and spend the night painting until I went to bed at mid-morning,” he remembers, but without nostalgia.
“As soon as I could afford it, I started painting outdoors and in daylight.
Only then do you see how a painting really looks.”
Spain, he says, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for him.
Goya, Buñuel and Picasso head his altar.
He even pointed out the man from Malaga as his counterpart.
In 1992, he told
New York Magazine
: “I'm the closest thing to Picasso you're ever going to see in this fucking life.”
Then he said it was a joke.
Does he maintain it?
He gives a sly look: “What do you think?”
He got hold of a Picasso as soon as he could:
Femme au chapeu
, one of the master's late works.
For years, he slept veiled by that painting in his bedroom at Palazzo Chupi, an eight-story, 15,000-square-meter building that he built in a former perfume factory in Greenwich Village.
The house, which he still lives in, occupies a central place in his history: baptized with the nickname that Julian gave to Olatz (
Chupi
comes from Chupa Chups), to cover the loan for its construction, the artist auctioned, in addition to some
Warhol
and some
dali,
his beloved picasso at Christie's for 7.7 million dollars.
The question is clear: what does one put where there was a
Picasso
?
“A painting of mine, of course,” Schnabel replies.
Ingrid Sischy, historic director of Interview
magazine
and close friend of the New Yorker, once said that Palazzo Chupi was “a kind of architectural autobiography.”
With its soaring ceilings and opulent finishes, it was the reverse of the small house of humble materials in which Schnabel grew up in Brooklyn before moving at the age of 15 to Brownsville, Texas, the town on the border with Mexico where he discovered waves and LSD. .
His parents, Jewish immigrants, had little to do with art: he sold everything from meat to second-hand clothes and she became president of Hadassah, the organization that brought together female Zionism in the United States. Julian spent his days painting in the kitchen. .
At the age of 10, his mother took him to the Metropolitan, where he had his first crush on Rembrandt.
And to the cinema, where he was fascinated by
Spartacus
.
“Later I discovered European cinema: Vittorio de Sica and Pasolini are still some of my favorites.”
He assures that he became a filmmaker by chance.
In 1996, to prevent a documentary filmmaker from mistelling the story of his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat, he came forward with a biopic as a requiem,
Basquiat
, dedicated to the tragic graffiti artist who died of an overdose at the age of 27.
Also to his mentor, Andy Warhol, played by David Bowie, who wore the pop art myth's original wig and glasses for the filming.
The move turned out well: he was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
While other visual artists of his generation – Robert Longo, David Salle, Cindy Sherman – failed in film, Schnabel continued to persevere.
His next film,
Before Night Falls
(2000), told the story of Reinaldo Arenas, a Cuban writer exiled to the United States and a victim of AIDS.
An unknown in Hollywood, Javier Bardem, took the role.
“I had seen him in Bigas Luna's films,
Jamón, jamón
[1992] and
Huevos de oro
[1993], and he told me: either this guy is like that or he is a very good actor.
It turned out to be the latter.”
The performance would earn Bardem his first Oscar nomination.
Javier Bardem and Julian Schnabel at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards.
The director filming the film Basquiat in one of his characteristic striped pajamas, in 1995.Getty
The work Stephen Janson (known to some as Stephen Gluck), 1988, made with broken plates
The artist with his plate paintings exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art an 1987Getty
The artist poses in 1995 with his wife at the time, former model Olatz López GarmendíaGetty Images
His house, Palazzo Chupi, built in a former perfume factory in New York
Schnabel wants to repeat with Bardem in the adaptation of
Buñuel awake
(2016), a book by the recently deceased Jean-Claude Carrière, a screenwriter who accompanied the master of surrealism by signing essential texts of films such as
Belle de jour
(1967).
“Buñuel regretted not being able to wake up from death every 10 years to read the news.
In the novel, it is Carrière who goes to his grave to read them to him,” explains Schnabel.
Carrière co-signed the script for
Van Gogh, at the Gates of Eternity
(2018) with Schnabel's current wife, where Willem Dafoe played the red-haired madman.
Why does he always end up telling the lives of other artists?
“I learned to make films by shooting directly.
I am a painter, and my painter's eye prevails over everything else.
But I also know what it means to be a creator.
It's ridiculous to say that you've told someone's life story in two hours.
That's why I don't consider my films to be biographical.
“They are portraits.”
His painter's eye has been able to transform into cinematographic talent: one of his portraits,
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
(2007), of the former editor of
Elle
magazine Jean-Dominique Bauby, who died after a syndrome that left him paralyzed and unable to communicate. Just for the blink of an eye, it earned Schnabel an Oscar nomination for best director.
His last filming ended a few days before this interview: it was the adaptation of
In the hand of Dante
(2002), by Nick Tosches.
“It has been intense and crazy.
In just a couple of months we have traveled half of Italy: Sicily, Venice, Verona, Rome…”
Johnny Depp discovered the book after Schnabel directed it in
Before Night Falls
, a film in which he played a transvestite.
The idea was that one would film and the other would star, but Depp, who had acquired the rights, ended up withdrawing and was replaced by Oscar Isaac.
The adaptation takes place between the present and the 14th century, between the discovery of the original manuscript of
The Divine Comedy
under the Vatican, which falls into the hands of the mafia, and the travels to the past of a reincarnated Dante.
“Many actors play two roles, in the past and the present.
Participating [take a breath]: Gerard Butler, Jason Momoa, John Malkovich, Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese, Franco Nero, Gal Gadot, Sabrina Impacciatore, Duke Nicholson [Jack Nicholson's grandson], Galen Grier Hopper [Dennis Hopper's daughter], even Benjamin Clementine, who sings and plays Mephistopheles... Did I tell you that Scorsese is coming out?
Don't put it in, just say he's an executive producer.
"Marty loves to do cameos, but it's a surprise to the audience."
As several websites have already revealed, we lift, with permission, the veto.
The filmmaker's entire family has participated in one way or another in his projects: Schnabel has featured his parents, Olatz and all of his children in cameos.
This time his wife Louise repeats as co-writer and editor.
“Working with family, and with that extended family that is friends, is a matter of trust.
I have known John Malkovich for 38 years.
How can we not call him to have fun together? ”She proclaims.
Olmo Schnabel, the other twin, wakes up in his dressing gown, having been stretching for a long time in the next bedroom.
His father proudly introduces him: “He was the one who got me the money!
Nowadays it is almost impossible to obtain financing.”
Olmo had just signed his
debut feature
,
Pet Shop Days
, a story of toxic and criminal gay love with Darío Yazbek, brother of Gael García Bernal, as the protagonist.
And he attracted the producer of his project, Francesco Melzi d'Eril – a regular of Luca Guadagnino – to raise the $25 million that
In the Hand of Dante
cost .
Olmo takes a wrapped hoodie out of the suitcase and hands it to his father.
It's the one they made as a gift for the team.
“I finally get mine!” exclaims Julian, and puts it on.
On the back there is a message: “
There is only the eternal present
.”
There is only the eternal present.
Schnabel Sr. recognizes himself in the phrase: “For me there is no past or future, only the eternal present.”
–You have ever said that you are not afraid of death.
Now that she has turned 72, does he fear the passage of age?
–I just made a movie about a guy who travels 700 years in time to realize that he is with the right woman.
I hope it doesn't take me as long to determine if I'm on the right path in my life.
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