Julian Schnabel Quotes

I have a completely romantic idea about making paintings, I guess.

In a certain way, my work had set me up to be against lots of things. If there wasn't some sort of sanction for it in the public world, it might have been...it wouldn't have been tolerated, because people don't want things to get shaken up.

I'm not mannerist. I don't think I'm interested in mannerism. If I ever use it in a way, or if manner is like some kind of product of certain sorts of usage of different kinds of materials, then it's about involution or turning in on that.

I never paid much attention to being Jewish when I was a kid. In fact, I'd say my religion was more surfing than Judaism - that's what I spent most of my time doing.

I don't think people are terribly interested in young artists who were doing interesting thing, but I don't think people are terribly interested in young artists.

It's nice to see your name in print. It's interesting.

Sometimes my kids might tell me they had a dream or and maybe I'll paint some paintings from their dream. That's one good thing you get from your kids. Rob them of their dreams.

My compulsion is to create things.

Paintings are not like the Internet. They're not like movies. They're not electronic-friendly. You have to go see them. You have to stand in front of them. That's the great thing about them.

I think not knowing what to think of your paintings is a good place to be.

There are generations of people who have never seen a big plate painting in person. And they don't know what the hell they look like, they don't know what it feels like to stand in a room with them.

I do dream about art, and images come to me in dreams. I am definitely hoping to be in touch with my subconscious. I expect a call any minute.

Sometimes I'll dream that I saw a show and then I'll wake up in the morning and realize that I didn't see the show, that it was my dream. And I just remember what the paintings look like in the dream and I think, "Oh, nobody painted those. I can do that."

I've never made a movie to make money. I've never made a painting to make money.

I think basically I'm a painter, but I would use anything to make my point.

Making a painting is like playing the saxophone. You hit the note and it comes out.

A lot of what I do is about being in the moment and I think that's hard for people to get. I like it when things suddenly affect the painting. I mix up this red and it affects the whole painting or this little bit of white falls down there, and something changes the whole nature of the thing. The residue on what happens, that's what's in the paintings.

You can't have a good bullfight without a good bull.

I want the paintings to take me or the viewer out somewhere else.

I see paintings everywhere. I look at stuff and it looks like painting to me.

I like when people get really close to the paintings, when they can't really get away from them, I like them to operate in that way on the viewer.

Can I find a poetic that can be subversive enough to grab people in some subliminal way, to where they feel that they are altered and have had an experience that belonged to them?

What's interesting about making art is that you take everything you know about it and you bring it up to that point, and you start making a physical thing that addresses what that is. And when you do it, you don't know anything about it - if it's going to work or not work.

The movie [Miral] is not pro-Palestinian. It's about Palestinians. It's a Palestinian story, written by a Palestinian person. I don't know anybody else that could have done that

I wanted to show painting paintings first, then the plate paintings; now I can show that I've sort of freed myself from stylistic inhibitions.

Some people might think that the paintings are involved with a mythic - not just subject matter - but a certain sort of physical space that the paintings occupy...like personages.

Painting is like breathing to me. It’s what I do all the time. Every day I make art, whether it is painting, writing or making a movie.

Maybe my work looks a little crazy, a little insane, but I don't really see myself as a crazy artist or a shaman artist.

There were some types of sanctions that happen in the public world that made my work acceptable, where someone looks at the paintings and they don't - they may go, "okay," and then look at it in a different sort of way. Instead of just looking at it as some type of wild art, they look at it in a historical perspective or context.

Some people must go to extremes to get the world in balance for themselves. Some can't bear bright lights, so wherever they go they search for the dark; they turn the lights down, anything to sustain some level of comfort.

I don't think the meaning in my paintings comes from just using broken dishes.

We need to not be scared [of muslim], but understand each other. When you're around these people, you see they have much more in common than their differences.

I think people have problems sometimes when things are too general. In fact, they are not really general at all.

I don't like building, I'm not a carpenter, I don't like constructions particularly and things like that, but placements and the kinds of psychological weight that different materials have is pretty interesting to me.

It's a great excuse and luxury, having a job and blaming it for your inability to do your own art. When you don't have to work, you are left with the horror of facing your own lack of imagination and your own emptiness. A devastating possibility when finally time is your own.

I think it's good when people don't write good things about your work. I mean, what a great compliment it is to be called a charlatan.

I think beauty is a feeling that you get after you've had an experience. It's the way you feel about it that is beautiful.

I'm not saying I'm the only Jewish person who cares about Palestinian people, but unfortunately, their voices are not necessarily heard as loudly as they should be.

I don't know if I could, like, see a face and know what the face of beauty looks like, but after I've seen it I know if I've felt like it was beauty.

It doesn't matter what I think I am, it matters what I do.

My early paintings weren't that good - I was very influenced by Francis Bacon. But there was a kind of intensity there. And however influenced they may have been by other people, even my earliest paintings were recognisably my own.

I think the nice thing about showing work in New York is that other artists come to see it. When you show work in Switzerland or somewhere else, everywhere else seems to be the provinces in a certain way. You wonder what your paintings are doing on the walls and you wonder who's looking at them.

I think it's your own ghost, seeing the work and just thinking if it will be okay to leave that around.

You seem to make different concessions with yourself about what you want to focus on or not, and what you want to pay attention to.

The thing about living in New York is that there are other artists; that is the most difficult, I think they are the hardest critics.

I was always very... impatient about showing my paintings to people.

Nobody is perfect. I don't think it's the most scathing indictment of anybody. It's pretty innocuous. [Miral] is just the story of one family and one girl, living in that part of the world, and that's what goes on over there. I thought that maybe it would be informative and useful for people to know more about it.

I think, basically, I'm an abstract artist. I just think that that's not even an issue. I think everything's abstract.