Of Dinner Plates and In the Hand Of Dante — Inside Artist Julian Schnabel’s Epic Year and His PaperCity Cover

If you’re an art person — or a film, design, or architecture aficionado or a member of the cultural cognoscenti — the name Julian Schnabel carries bold imprimatur. The New York and Texas-reared talent redefined painting via the unforgettable Plate Paintings, one of the through lines of a 50-year practice. The artist’s The Patients and the Doctors, 1978, changed everything in the last half of the 20th century, solidifying a space for the then-26-year-old within the contemporary art world.

Since then, Schnabel’s vision has perambulated from painting and sculpture to encompass interior design and architecture (famously New York City’s Gramercy Park Hotel and his own Palazzo Chupi compound in the West Village), alongside a much-lauded turn as filmmaker. Beginning with his directorial debut, the 1996 filmic portrait of fellow artist Basquiat — a riveting insider view of the 1980s art world and a talent who flamed out too young — succeeded by six other films, Schnabel has garnered cinematic accolades, nominations, and awards in the Oscars, Golden Globes, Cannes and Venice International Film Festival, to cite a few. Martin Scorsese, mostly recently cast in In the Hand of Dante as the sage Isaiah, has said of Schnabel: “He has invented his own cinematic language.”