ABSTRACT
Commenting on the 1985 Julian Schnabel solo exhibition at the Sperone Gallery in Rome, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev notes his debt to the Italian Trans-avantgarde. Focusing on the differences between the American and Italian approach to images, she stresses the idea of a non-historical attitude of Schnabel, whom she considers as the epitome of an American painter of the 1980s. “Art is a very primitive and primordial way of communicating through visual signs.” There is certainly conceptual refinement, Expressionist gestures, Trans-avantgarde eclecticism somewhat reminiscent of Rauschenberg, part Informal, part Graffiti artist. When writing about Schnabel, greater attention is usually paid to the iconography, or to the painted “surface,” as if there were a difference in level between the two. In short, connotation as opposed to the intentional denotation alone of Minimal art.
