Julian Schnabel at Vito Schnabel Gallery for the “Paintings From 1978 - 1987” exhibition. May 2. Photographed by Samuel Abelow.
Prelude: Jewish man walking
On Thursday, May 2, I decided to go to Julian Schnabel’s retrospective exhibition at his son’s gallery, Vito Schnabel Gallery in Chelsea, New York
The walk from the subway was quite long, I averted my gaze from joggers passing by, and high powered business ladies. A yuppie seemed to notice my tzitzit (fringed garment), so I tucked them in a bit.
The crowd outside the gallery was vibrant and I thought, wow this is what the opening of a legendary, living painter is like. Once I got inside I noticed how much the crowd was schmoozing in the front and also packed around the bar, waiting to get a glass of wine.
Julian Schnabel, “Leda and the Swan (from Mutant King series),” oil, wax, rabbit skin glue on burlap, 120 x 108 inches. 1981. Detail, photographed by Samuel Abelow.
Immediately, I went to the back of the gallery, the most open space. A good spot. Julian Schnabel appeared, walking towards me.
Opening-day Overture: A Conversation With Julian Schnabel
Now, Julian Schnabel was right in front of me. There was a tall blonde woman in a black dress to his right – I think that is his current wife. And there was the blonde boy clinging to the painter’s jacket. I went up to Mr. Schnabel.
I said, “Hello Rabbi Schnabel, I have a question for you.”
He looked up from the young boy – his son – who was clinging to his shirt and said, “Yes, what’s that?”
“Have you ever read Torah or Jewish mysticism?”
He looked back at the boy, I wasn’t sure if he would respond. “Have I ever read what?” exclaimed Schnabel, turning back towards me.
“I was speaking to Anselm Kiefer once, and he said that he never read anything deeper than Jewish mysticism.”
Schnabel now turned his forceful presence towards me. “You were speaking to Anselm Kiefer and he said what about Jewish mysticism?”
“Kiefer told me that he had never found any text as deep and rich as found in Jewish mysticism,” I said.
“Good for Anselm then!”
I guess I had thrown a jab. And Schnabel came back with one.
There is a feeling one has when they are being observed. I felt that, and glanced to my right. His wife, the blonde woman, was smiling gleefully. I looked at her face briefly. She had very sharp features and her skin was very clear, her presence bubbly yet mature.
I looked back at Schnabel, I felt my heart pounding a bit. I said, “I very much liked the painting around the back here, which reminds me of the Francis Bacon pope series.”
“That painting is based off..” and then Schnabel interjected a series of references to an artist I never heard of, the drawing of which he had lifted from to create his expressionistic riff. A dreamy white dash of paint indicated a man’s head, on a velvet black backdrop.
The young boy was clung to his father’s jacket again, he was asking about something. Schnabel looked down and then back at me.
“Thank you,” I said formally.
“Thank you for coming to the show,” said Schnabel. He gestured to me as I walked away, quite endearingly, earnestly. He came across as humble for such a wealthy, successful and liberated man.
Selfie on the way back from the Schnabel exhibit.
Esoteric intermission: Rabbi Schnabel at the yeshiva
Speaking with Julian Schnabel gave me a jolt. I told my friends at the yeshiva that I called him Rabbi Schnabel. They got a kick out of that. At the Saturday afternoon meal, I spoke with my friend David from Brazil and Natan from Israel. The latter, a young, handsome French-Israeli with a knack for spirituality and psychology, was bringing up deep topics, evoking conversation.
Somehow, I got started on how the Lubavitcher Rebbe did not like to say that one jew was closer than another.
This is so, because in the Era of Redemption, every Jew will be present, and will come to connect to God. And it is written in the Talmud, “In the place where penitents stand, even the completely righteous do not stand.” This is because according to the Kabbalistic (mystical) understanding, when the person who was once in a realm of sin and total distance reconnects, he uplifts previously hidden, buried, sequestered pieces of Godliness to the realm of holiness. These pieces of God’s manifestation in materiality (“sparks” in Kabbalistic terms), are unable to be reached by pious jews.
So I concluded that from the most transcendent perspective (Chavaya), you cannot say that one jew is closer than another, because in the future the person who appears far now will actually have a special and incomparable closeness than the one who appears close now!
On Sunday, on the train ride to Connecticut I wrote a formal dissertation on this insight I had. See: “Distant" Jews & The Era of Redemption: Why I’m Painting a Portrait of Julian Schanbel.
See: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qHvvd-dVyxzCVEsYdBXlTVvwDcV3GRQpbqtig0nG7KU/edit?usp=sharing
This was not enough though. I merited a spiritual revelation from all of this, but not yet a piece of art. I had more work to do.
Kabbalistic Coda: Portrait of Julian Schnabel
I wanted to continue the conversation with Julian Schnabel. Having met him at the gallery, and spoken with the legendary painter, I was elated! But, it was a brief exchange. I needed to extend the conversation, to penetrate deeper into Rabbi Schnabel’s pieces of God, buried, bundled, varnished or splattered – I wanted to know more of his wisdom, life and ecstatic insanity. So I did a study on him.
Sometimes a study (drawing) doesn’t look like much. It’s about context. To take up the paper, the implements and to look at a photo – in this case the original photo I took of Julian Schnabel at the gallery – and to do some draftsmanship, that’s enough. The drawing is an attempt to get into my brain the hat, purple lensed glasses, and jawline of the subject for the portrait. I had an intuition: the horns of Gauguin; the red abstract painting from Schnabel’s exhibition.
At two pm, I approached the canvas, I had my drawing pinned up, a print out of the original photo of Schnabel and my digital notes open with my original photo of Julian Schnabel and also one photo of a previous wife and one of the current wife.
I decided to paint Schnabel’s complexion pinkish, somewhat naturalistic, because Ashkenazi jews like my mother, like myself, like Aryeh, have a pinkish skin tone. I decided to paint his fedora in a clearly drawn manner, because the hat seems to relate to the Jewishness of the man.
Sometime in the midst of painting I made a series of connections regarding the paintings thematic content, which I had done unconsciously, but which rested on a foundation of work from previous years. For instance, I had chosen the red abstract painting, titled “Leda and the Swan” from Schnabel’s exhibition as a background for my painting, but, further, I had unwittingly portrayed Julian Schnabel in the role of the Swan.
In the original myth, Zeus takes the form of a Swan and finds a mortal woman whom, as he often does, he impregnates—with an egg, out of which hatches Helen of Troy, a beauty worth an empire, but that’s another story—My present painting postures Schnabel in such a seductive role, including the wing.
Because of this and all the other symbols loaded into the portrait, I thought it could be called “Portrait of Julian Schnabel from 11 Different Dimensions.” It’s an attempt at understanding reality, exile & diaspora of the Jewish people, as well as the ecstasy of insanity – that is the uniting of opposites, heaven and earth, the pink jew and the yellow european, holiness and impurity, transcendence and materiality.
It’s looking for what Rabbi Schnabel could teach us, his pieces of God.