CVJ: Nicknames of Maitre D's and Other Excerpts from Life (Inscribed by artist1988

Schnabel, Julian

ISBN 10: 0394553136 / ISBN 13: 9780394553139

Published by Random House, 1987

About this Item

Signed , "love julian to Daniela" artworld/fashion friend on front end page in1988

Hardcover red cloth boards with mylar dust jacket. Illustrated in color and b/w throughout. 222 pages. Near Fine tight copy.

At thirty-six, Julian Schnabel was not only represented in the most important exhibitions of his time; retrospectives of his works were already being celebrated in major museums such as the Stedelijk Museum, the Tate in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. CVJ, gives a vivid, unfiltered account of his life: how he leaves Texas in 1973 to return to his hometown of New York City, immerses himself in the downtown art world, hangs out at Max's Kansas City, legendary club for artists, musicians, and cultural provocateurs and meets Sigmar Polke, Blinky Palermo, Ross Bleckner, and other figures who defined the era. He travels to Europe to study the Old Masters, absorbing the physical weight of Velázquez, Caravaggio, and Giotto, and brings that ambition back to a New York art scene still reckoning with the legacy of Minimalism and Conceptualism. The result is a text that is at once memoir, manifesto, and artist's sketchbook, poetic, brash, and frequently very funny.

CVJ is essential art history - documenting a pivotal moment in late-twentieth-century art: the explosive return of large-scale, materially ambitious painting in the early 1980s, a movement in which Schnabel was a central and polarizing figure. The book reproduces the remarkable body of work he had produced up to that point: the iconic Plate Paintings, between painting and sculpture; monumental works in oil and wax executed on velvet and tarpaulins; surfaces encrusted with "dirt," cracks, and objets trouvés that project nto the viewer's space; as well as drawings and sculptures that reveal his restless experimentation.

Schnabel's insistence on physicality, scale, and the incorporation of non-traditional materials opened a path that subsequent generations of painters have followed Artists working today in expanded painting practices, treating the canvas as a site for accumulation, rupture, and sculptural intervention, owe a significant debt to the vocabulary Schnabel helped establish.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1771016483424

Bibliographic Details

• Title: CVJ: Nicknames of Maitre D's and Other Excerpts from Life (Inscribed by artist1988
• Publisher: Random House
• Publication Date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394553136
• ISBN 13: 9780394553139
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Dimensions: 1.1W x 9H x 12.2D inches 1.1 inches width by 9 inches height by 12.2 inches depth
• Weight: 3.935 pounds
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

Shows a variety of paintings and sculpture by Schnabel and shares his comments on his life, career, and works

Reviews

Schnabel, a lion of the New York celebrity scene, here produces an autobiography at the grand old age of 35. Written in a flat, almost minimalist style, the memoir tells how a young man from Brooklyn, then Texas, lands in Soho, gets discovered, becomes rich and famous but preserves his artistic integrity as he bums around Europe and New York. Schnabel writes as if the daily doings of his cliquish circle are bound to be of immense interest to readers. He offers tough-talking advice to aspiring artists and sets down his critical opinions on numerous contemporaries; sometimes he drifts into a sort of Beat prose-poetry as he confronts themes like death and fame. Approximately 140 reproductions of paintings and objects are included. Author tour. (November
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Schnabel is a "hot" property in the contemporary art world. His brutal, broken crockery paintings and philosophical braggadocio have won him critical attention and acclaim, not to mention sales. Unfortunately, this autobiographical meander tells us much more than we need to know about Schnabel's views on artistic production. The artist's linking of passions to visual development seems a calculated evocation of, let's say, Jackson Pollock? The result is an intellectually tiresome text, with good, although incompletely captioned, illustrations. Though the book is expensive, some specialized and art school collections will want it. Paula A. Baxter, N.Y.P.L.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.