Julian Schnabel: a beginner's guide

The New York-based painter, sculptor and award-winning filmmaker opens ‘Every Angel has a Dark Side’ at the Dairy Art Centre, his first major show in the capital for fifteen years. Here we reveal the man behind these magnificent myth-sampling paintings

His early work is a crock
Born in Brooklyn in 1951, Schnabel broke on to the New York art scene in the early 1980s with his 'plate paintings', a series of portraits on smashed crockery.

He's big on biopics
Schnabel cast David Bowie as Andy Warhol in his 1996 film about New York artist and close friend Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 2000, Javier Bardem took the role of Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in 'Before Night Falls' and in 2007 he was hailed best director at Cannes for his beautifully disturbing 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly', based on the real-life story of French Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was felled by a stroke that paralysed all but one eyelid.


He's a jammies guy
Whether he's at work or walking the red carpet, Schnabel always wears silk pyjamas designed by his former wife Olatz López Garmendia.

He's in the pink
Schnabel lives and works in a Citizen Kane Xanado-esque condominium called Palazzo Chupi in New York's West Village. The redevelopment of this old horse stables pays homage to all things outrageously opulent. The Pepto Bismol pink façade has received mixed reviews, though.

He's got creative offspring
The eldest of Schnabel's six children are already showing artistic tendencies: Lola is a painter and filmmaker, just like daddy; Stella is an actress and poet while Vito is the art dealer of the family.