Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/749295
284 culturedmag.com mean really vast, cavernous, partially sky-lit) studio, to better see them. Some of these sprawling paintings, which all feature a huge stuffed white goat, reference his friend the late artist Mike Kelley. "People can't see paintings," he says, moving around the room to assess his own work better. "There's a certain light you need. I remember a quote: 'Once a painting becomes familiar, it's too late.'" It becomes clear that Schnabel thinks a lot about looking at art, about experiencing art. Later he says, "The first time you see a Caravaggio painting it's amazing. The second time you see it is still the first time you see it. And so is the third time. And the same is true of the movie Shoeshine by Vittorio De Sica." Bringing up film is telling. This is a guy whose movies—Basquiat, Before Night Falls and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly—were all defter and more realized than the work of many full-time directors. But Schnabel admits he's annoyed that some people ask him, "Hey do you still paint?" His reaction: "I think, Where have you been?" he says, smiling. The Aspen show brings him, and us, back to his core passion. "It's the first museum exhibition to focus on these works," says the museum's director and CEO, Heidi Zuckerman, who had the clever idea to stage it. "How do you look at something with its own mythology around it but see it fresh?" Good question. The show runs through February 19 and features 13 of the works that caused quite a stir when Schnabel started making them in the late 1970s. Created with actual pottery shards, they had an ancient aspect to them, and straddled the line between painting and sculpture. They didn't look like anything else around—and still don't today, "They have a kind of urgency," says Zuckerman. "They make me uncomfortable," which she means as a compliment. They don't soothe, they provoke. Love or hate them, you can't ignore them. Schnabel has told the story many times, but in essence, the genesis of his most famous works was simple. "I tried to make a painting I hadn't "It's the first museum exhibition to focus on these works. How do you look at something with its own mythology around it but see it fresh?" —Heidi Zuckerman COURTESY DES MOINES ART CENTER PERMANENT COLLECTION