Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel is presented in Andy Warhol’s diary as a painter whose ambition was as conspicuous as his work. Warhol alternately mocked his pushiness, worried that he was borrowing from other artists, and acknowledged his energy and growing success. Their encounters make Schnabel a measure of a changing art world: he sought Warhol’s likeness and inspiration, while also drawing on the history and mythology of Warhol’s career as he built his own public identity.

First encounters and the proposed portrait

The first substantial notice of Schnabel comes as Warhol looks through a book of his earlier paintings and despairs that he can no longer think of anything clever to do. He wonders whether he should return to Campbell’s Soup Cans. Chris Makos calls with news that Schnabel is becoming prominent and that Abstract Expressionism is coming back into fashion; Makos offers to bring over a can of Campbell’s Won Ton soup, its lettering an unexpected prompt for Warhol’s thoughts about returning to an old motif. Schnabel’s rise thus enters the diary at a moment when Warhol is questioning his own inventiveness and considering repetition as a possible answer.

By March 1982, Schnabel wants to paint Warhol. At a dinner Lord Jermyn gives for Fred Hughes at The Odeon restaurant, Warhol describes Schnabel as a painter who charges $40,000 for a portrait, compares his position in the eighties to Jim Dine’s in an earlier period, and accuses him of copying other people’s work. He also calls Schnabel pushy and says that the painter wants Warhol to sit because he needs him as inspiration. Despite those reservations, Warhol concludes that he will have to pose. The proposed portrait is not simply a commission: it puts Warhol, long accustomed to turning other people into images, in the position of a subject whose presence another ambitious artist wants to use.

When Warhol goes to Schnabel’s studio in November, he wears a Paramount Pictures T-shirt that he thinks would work for the sitting. Schnabel makes him take it off. Warhol stands posing for two hours, removing his glasses so that he can look Schnabel in the face while still appearing detached. The account records the bodily terms of the exchange: the painter directs the pose and controls the setting, while Warhol turns his own expression into part of the performance. The diary does not describe the finished portrait here, but it does preserve the tension between Warhol’s skepticism and his willingness to be painted.

Ambition, reputation, and the art market

In 1983, Warhol visits Schnabel after calling him and finds him in a building with four floors that had once been bought and converted into co-ops by Les Levine; Schnabel had previously worked as Levine’s assistant. Warhol recognizes a resemblance between Schnabel’s practice and his own principle of making a painting a day. He says that Schnabel is trying to become the new Andy Warhol, a comparison that makes him nervous enough to leave and return to work at the office. The anxiety is specific: Schnabel’s pursuit of Warhol’s example seems to turn the older artist’s method and public identity into resources for a successor.

That ambition is matched by a sharp rise in prices and attention. On Memorial Day in 1983, Warhol meets Schnabel and Francesco Clemente with Bruno Bischofberger at the Jockey Club. Schnabel’s work has just sold at auction for $96,000. Warhol places him among the new Italian painters in the company of Sandro Chia and Cucci, while also remarking that Schnabel is determined to become a star. Later that summer, Warhol notices that a newspaper review of Schnabel’s portraits has omitted Warhol’s portrait, which Warhol had believed would bring Schnabel considerable press. The omission punctures the expectation attached to the sitting: Warhol’s celebrity had been imagined as promotional value, but it did not guarantee the notice Schnabel wanted.

Warhol’s suspicions about Schnabel’s methods recur. In November 1984, Schnabel calls to say he is coming by with Captain Beefheart, and Warhol worries that Schnabel may have heard him saying that he visits other artists’ studios to find things to copy. At the opening of a Schnabel show the next day, Warhol sees numerous plates on the walls and hears that Schnabel once worked as a short-order cook at Mickey Ruskin’s restaurant. The detail connects the painter’s earlier work to a past in service labor, while Warhol’s observation that Ruskin is now forgotten places both men within a scene where reputations can rise, fade, and be displaced. Warhol finds the exhibition interesting, though he leaves to meet Cornelia at a horse show.

The studio as performance

A later visit to Schnabel’s home reveals a painter who presents his work with the same force he brings to his career. Schnabel has paintings throughout the house and stands beside them explaining what each one means. Warhol finds the performance so striking that he wishes he had been recording it. The wish is characteristic of the diary’s attention to scenes that might themselves become material: Schnabel’s self-interpretation is not just a private account of the paintings but a display of the artist explaining his own importance.

The house contains other evidence of Schnabel’s scale and theatricality. He has made a heavy cast-iron bed, and plate canvases are everywhere; Warhol notes his history as a short-order cook alongside the abundance of his art and his fine 1950s furniture. He calls Schnabel energetic and bold. At dinner with Schnabel and Francesco Clemente, the conversation turns to Willem de Kooning. Schnabel disparages him; Warhol disagrees and insists that de Kooning is a great painter, a judgment Francesco Clemente eventually shares. The exchange shows Warhol’s criticism was not simply resistance to a younger star: he could defend an older painter against a new artist’s attempt to dominate the conversation.

By December 1986, Schnabel’s working environment has expanded into a huge West 11th Street studio with a balcony and roof. Beautifully dressed secretaries manage the schedule in tightly measured appointments, while Schnabel summons famous visitors, among them Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman. Warhol also sees Schnabel painting over Japanese backgrounds and tarpaulins bearing glued-on words. The studio makes the painter’s reach visible in both material and social terms: large working space, managed access, recognizable visitors, and continuing production of the plate paintings that Warhol understands to be selling.

Borrowing, books, and uneasy exchanges

Schnabel’s use of Warhol’s example becomes explicit when he gives Warhol a copy of his book in January 1986. Warhol thinks it is strongly influenced by Popism. Its account begins with Schnabel’s arrival from Waco, Texas, and his encounters at Max’s Kansas City, then moves back and forth in time, marking later passages with dates such as August 1983. Warhol notes that the book includes everyone but him. He nevertheless finds it interesting and expects it to sell well. His response holds together recognition and exclusion: Schnabel has taken up the world Warhol helped make famous, but Warhol does not see himself granted a place in Schnabel’s version of it.

The relationship also involves practical artistic business. In November 1986, Schnabel visits with his daughter to discuss Warhol possibly making a different image over a fake Warhol painting Schnabel had bought. Warhol thinks the work may have been painted by Gerard Malanga and says Schnabel did not know it was fake when he purchased it. The proposed alteration turns questions of authorship and authenticity into a shared project: the painting is already a false Warhol, yet the possibility of adding a new image offers a way to work with, rather than simply discard, the mistake.

Schnabel’s dealings with Fred Hughes remain another source of Warhol’s uncertainty. In early 1987, Warhol finds Schnabel being unusually charming to Fred and cannot work out what Schnabel wants from him; he recalls that Schnabel had been nice to Fred once before when he wanted something. Schnabel takes Fred down to the studio, deepening Warhol’s suspicion without resolving it. Around the same time, Schnabel proposes firing Gael and hiring his wife as editor, insulting Gael in the process. Warhol records the bluntness of the intervention and again characterizes Schnabel as pushy and energetic. Charm, access, and professional proposals appear in the diary as parts of the same ambitious social practice.

Late recognition and the diary’s portrait

The diary’s last substantial encounters place Schnabel’s career on an international stage. In January 1987, Warhol and Chris Makos visit the Centre Pompidou in Paris to see Schnabel’s exhibition. Warhol says the show looks great and that Schnabel looks like a talented artist. This is a clear acknowledgment of achievement after years of describing him as derivative, self-promoting, or anxious for stardom. It does not erase those earlier judgments; instead, the change gives them proportion. Warhol can recognize the work’s success while continuing to observe the machinery of ambition around it.

Schnabel also appears in Warhol’s imagination as an audience for style. Before taking part in a fashion show Benjamin has coordinated at the Tunnel, Warhol describes the snakeskin and rabbit-fur clothes as making him look like Liberace and jokes that Schnabel would be impressed enough to start wearing them. The joke belongs to the diary’s ongoing traffic between art, celebrity, clothing, and self-display. Schnabel is no longer only the painter who wants Warhol to pose; he has become one of the imagined spectators whose approval gives a look its force.

Across these episodes, Schnabel’s characterization is shaped by repetition and revision. Warhol repeatedly notices his energy, his desire for recognition, his plate paintings, and his proximity to powerful dealers, artists, and celebrities. He also records moments when the expected payoff fails, as with the portrait omitted from the review, and moments when his own skepticism gives way to admiration, as at the Paris exhibition. The diary does not settle the tension between influence and originality. It makes that tension part of Schnabel’s significance: he appears as both a painter in his own right and a figure whose rise is continually measured against Warhol’s methods, audience, and legacy.