Schnabel Surfaces in Venice

LindaYablonsky is exhausted by Venice but she still finds time for Julian Schnabel:

When I arrived last Sunday evening, however, La Serenissima was still serene. The streets were so empty that only the banners announcing exhibitions around town hinted at the madness at hand. Until, that is, I ran across Vito Schnabel and his sister Stella. “Come to my party for the Bruce High Quality Foundation tomorrow night,” Vito said. When tomorrow came, however, it was Julian Schnabel who headed the agenda.

The burly artist/director was lunching that Monday with Angela Westwater and Rula Jebreal, among others, at the Hotel Monaco, where I was attending dealer Frederico Sève’s toast to the Latin American artists in the Biennale.

After lunch, Schnabel lead a private tour of an impressive, forty-year retrospective of his paintings thatNorman Rosenthal organized for the magnificent Museo Correr, on a nearly pigeon-free San Marco.Norman Foster, Annie Cohen-Solal, and Jacqueline Schnabel joined the show’s admirers, though the most ardent may have been Schnabel himself. “Look at the way the paint lies on this surface,” he said at one point. “I think that’s pretty nifty.” This was not all braggadocio. “Julian is a very great artist,” Rosenthal confided. “But he is also his own worst enemy.”