Artist Julian Schnabel spoke on Thursday evening at the Michigan Theater. Industrialist Peter Brant joined Schnabel onstage and the multi-millionaire duo discussed the Julian Schnabel exhibition on display from early July until mid-September of this year before formally answering questions from the numerous members of the audience.
The audience was unsurprisingly enormous. The organ music ended before someone introduced the speakers. Schnabel and Brant walked onstage and the audience burst out clapping. Audience members seemed excitable and were presumably star-struck. Schnabel wore sunglasses and a comfortable-looking jumpsuit. The audience silenced as Schnabel repeatedly asked the management to dim the stage lights. The majority of the event took place in darkness as we viewed the prepared slideshow presentation.
The event was surprisingly interactive. Audience members randomly shouted out their comments, questions, and clarification requests; they posed such comments, questions, and requests without microphones and, consequently, the speakers often misheard them. At the end of the event people lined up in front of microphones in order to pose questions to the speakers in a more formal manner. Schnabel seemed simultaneously up-front and self-righteous in his interactions with audience members. Sometimes his answers would be either “I don’t know that” or “you should know that;” other times the artist refused to answer questions and insisted that his interrogators “figure it out.”
Artists require financial benefactors in order to achieve financial success. Much of Schnabel’s success stems from his personal connections as well as from his artistic talent. Schnabel debuted his career with painted-over plate fragments such as “The Patients and The Doctors” pictured above. Multiple layers and textures often add visual complexity to his work. Interestingly, Schnabel makes films in addition to painting; during the event, however, he admitted that he prefers painting to filmmaking. Painter, sculptor, and filmmaker Julian Schnabel is unafraid to experiment with a wide range of mediums and techniques. Most artists can draw inspiration from his artistic flexibility and his unabashed nature insofar as self-doubt and narrow-mindedness harm creativity.
Click here for Schnabel’s website.
