AGO Opens Major Julian Schnabel Exhibition September 1st

American art superstar Julian Schnabel has spent his life pushing the limits of painting and crossing artistic boundaries as an award-winning filmmaker. Now, for the first time, a major retrospective examines the connections between painting and film in Schnabel’s work, tracing how his paintings exist in dialogue with the cinema and revealing the rich interplay between the two media.

Julian Schnabel: Art and Film surveys Schnabel’s work as a painter from the mid-1970s to the present and features more than 25 key works including: several celebrated plate paintings (The Patients and the Doctors, 1978); paintings on velvet (Portrait of Andy Warhol, 1982) and sailcloth (Jane Birkin #2, 1990); monumental 22-by-22-foot canvasses (Anno Domini, 1990); and recent gesso-and-ink paintings on polyester, including examples from the 2006 Surfing Paintings series that Schnabel dedicated to legendary Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci. Other key cinematic figures on display include Marlon Brando, Albert Finney, Gary Oldman, Mickey Rourke, Christopher Walken, and Rula Jebreal, with whom he wrote the screenplay for his newest film, Miral, which is based on her novel.

Four of Schnabel's films - Basquiat (1996), Before Night Falls (2001), Lou Reed: Berlin (2007) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) - will screen throughout the exhibition's run. All screenings take place in the AGO's Jackman Hall.

A catalogue, Julian Schnabel: Art and Film, will be published in conjunction with the exhibition. The 448-page volume surveys Schnabel's career to date, juxtaposing his painterly production with his critically acclaimed films. The scripts of each of his four feature films will be included, punctuated with production stills from the films. David Moos has written the introduction and has also conducted a dialogue with Schnabel about the relationship between painting and film in his practice. The catalogue ($40) will be available September 1 at shopAGO. It is distributed by Distributed Art Publishers, New York.

Schnabel will visit the AGO on September 15 to celebrate the exhibition's opening with a book signing at 5 pm in shopAGO, followed by a public talk with David Moos at 7:15 pm in Baillie Court.

Schnabel will visit the AGO to celebrate the exhibition's opening by appearing in conversation with David Moos at a public talk on September 15.

Those eager for an earlier glimpse of Schnabel's work are in luck, as the AGO has installed a 2007 portrait of Bella and Lolita Nash, the twin daughters of Canadian-born NBA star Steve Nash and his wife Alejandra. Portrait of Bella and Lolita is on display on the Gallery's main floor. The work will be installed until January 2, 2011, and is accompanied by video footage of Schnabel and Nash reflecting on the process of the painting's creation