Interior view of Julian Schnabel's Manhattan home, Palazzo Chupi

Elvis by Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and public figure known for his membership in wildly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame". In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork.

The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is $100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.

Knives by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol Polaroids

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Ruiz Picasso; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him one of the best-known figures in twentieth century art.

Richard Prince

Richard Prince (born 1949 in the Panama Canal Zone) is a controversial American painter and photographer. Prince began creating collages containing photographs in 1975. His image, Untitled (Cowboy), a "rephotograph" constructed from cigarette advertisements, was the first rephotograph to raise more than $1 million at auction when it was sold at Christie's New York in 2005.

Starting in 1977, Prince photographed four photographs which previously appeared in the New York Times. This process of re-photographing continued into 1983, when his work Spiritual America featured Garry Gross's photo of Brooke Shields at the age of ten, standing in a bathtub, as an allusion to precocious sexuality and to the Alfred Stieglitz photograph by the same name. The display of this image led to lawsuits by Shields' mother and the original photographer, and led to further discussion within the art community, concerning the role of voyeurism within photography. His Jokes series (beginning 1986) concerns the sexual fantasies and sexual frustrations of middle-class America, using stand-up comedy and burlesque humor.





You moved to New York in 1973 when you were twenty-four.

Ever since I was a child, I always had this fantasy about coming to New York City. The first place I rented was on Prince Street and West Broadway in Soho. I didn't know a soul. I would go days without talking. My only conversations were with bartenders. Since I didn't come from a university background, I didn't have the contacts that would lead me to people in the art world. But I've always loved art, so there was never even a question about my being an artist. Saturday was gallery opening day, and lots of people were out and about. I had a great time.

What do you think of younger artists under your influence, people like Kelley Walker and Wade Guyton?


It would be strange for me to think I’m being ripped off, because that’s what I do! In those days, it was called “pirating.” Now they call it “sampling.” There’s a guy on the street who paints copies of my “Nurse” paintings, along with Elizabeth Peytons and Eric Fischls. I think it’s funny. I actually bought one; I thought it was pretty close.

How about your own collectors—do you agree with their taste in your work?


I’m surprised at the reaction to the “Nurse” paintings. I’ve never felt that I had to put out work that I actually liked—just because it’s out there doesn’t mean that I have to stand behind it. A lot of it’s experimental, spontaneous. It’s about knocking about in the studio and bumping into things.

The joke paintings are especially popular—one sold last year for more than $700,000.
When they first came out, you couldn’t give them away. They’ve become pretty serious to people, which is funny. During an auction last year, behind the podium, they had a monochromatic joke painting next to a Rothko next to a Barnett Newman. They’re just paint, stretchers, and canvas; it’s the subject that’s radical.

Longo, Schnabel, Sherman--they've all made movies. I've often wondered why you haven't.

I'm not very collaborative. I like being alone. Working alone. I hate actresses. I don't like having to ask permission. A green light is not something I'd be happy waiting for.

What was your first thought when you heard that Andy Warhol had died?

Sad. We had the same dentist. I used to run into him in the waiting room. We used to talk about "collecting." This was the early '80s. I had just started collecting first-edition books.

Carla Bruni by Javier - color study

Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian artist born in Padova, Italy, in 1960. He is probably best known for his satirical and controversial sculptures, particularly La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), depicting the Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite.

Cattelan did not attend art school but taught himself. He did many odd jobs, including one at a mortuary, which some credit for his macabre taste. He started his career in Forlì (Italy) making wooden furniture in the eighties where he came to know some designers like Ettore Sottsass. He made a catalogue of his work which he sent to galleries. This promotion gave him an opening in design and contemporary art. He created a sculpture of an ostrich with its head buried in the ground, wore a costume of a figurine with a giant head of Picasso, and affixed a Milanese gallerist to a wall with tape. During this period, he also created the Oblomov Foundation.

Most recently, Cattelan has taken on the role of curator. He resides in the East Village of New York City, but maintains a foothold in Milan. He created a magazine called Permanent Food which includes images stolen from other magazines.

Maurizio Cattelan along with long-term collaborators Ali Subotnick and Massimiliano Gioni, curated the 2006 Berlin Biennale [9], ran the Wrong Gallery, a glass door in New York attracting many highly accomplished artists to exhibit and published Charley: an occasional slightly satirical arts journal. He frequently submits articles to international publications such as Flash Art.

Cattelan’s personal art practice has led to him gaining a reputation as an art scene’s joker. One of his best known sculptures, ‘La Nona Ora’ consists of an effigy of Pope John Paul II in full ceremonial dress being crushed by a meteor and is a good example of his typically humorous approach to work. Another of Cattelan’s quirks is his use of a ‘stand-in’ in media interviews equipped with a stock of evasive answers and non-sensical explanations. Cattelan’s art makes fun of various systems of order – be it social niceties or his regular digs at the art world – and he often utilises themes and motifs from art of the past and other cultural sectors in order to get his point across. Cattelan sees no reason why contemporary art should be excluded from the critical spotlight it shines on other areas of life and his work seeks to highlight the incongruous nature of the world and our interventions within it no matter where they may lie. His work is often based on simple puns or subverts clichéd situations by, for example, substituting animals for people in sculptural tableaux. Frequently morbidly fascinating, Cattelan’s dark humour sets his work above the simple pleasures of well-made visual one-liners.

He has been described by Jonathan P. Binstock, curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art "as one of the great post-Duchampian artists and a smartass, too".

marina abramovic - artist is present show live at MOMA

A pioneer of performance art, Marina Abramović (born Yugoslavia, 1946) began using her own body as the subject, object, and medium of her work in the early 1970s. For the exhibition Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, The Museum of Modern Art’s first performance retrospective, Abramović performed in the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium every day the Museum was open between March 14 and May 31, 2010. Visitors were encouraged to sit silently across from the artist for a duration of their choosing, becoming participants in the artwork.

This photo gallery contains a record of some participants. The Artist Is Present is Abramovic’s longest performance to date.

Daniele Buetti

Daniele Buetti became internationally known in the 1990s with a major group of works entitled Looking for Love. The first installations of this name were large pinwalls, consisting in clusters of manipulated images of glamorous models from fashion magazines taped to the wall. The result is reminiscent of a teenager’s room, covered in posters and cuttings of his or her favorite pop-stars and heroes. The mainly color images, all of different format, feature glamorous models; these are treated by the artist with pseudo tattoos and scarifications, raising issues of beauty and individuality, but also of pain, and loneliness.

The nature of reality and the function of our emotions is Buetti’s ongoing concern. His scenarios use the language and tools of visual seduction, familiar to us through our exposure to advertising and the media. Thus, the artist initially conveys us to a world of apparent desirable happiness and fame. Buetti, however, looks behind the curtains of high-gloss limelight to reveal the frailness of appearances, together with the anxiety and insecurity behind an immaculate façade. He equips his beauties with speech bubbles for them to express unspoken, very personal feelings, far from their consumer appeal. We are lead to reflect on our own emotional experience of the close and infinitely precarious, but also emotional relationship between appearance and reality, exaltation and despair. The artist’s relationship to sentimentality is ambivalent: on the one side, he has a certain pleasure in succumbing to the magic of passion; on the other side he painfully discloses the mechanics of emotions. He guides the viewer into familiar mental spaces by provoking long felt desires. Buetti avoids postulating any kind of judgment: it is up to the viewer to let the image infiltrate his or her emotional world. Does the image create reality, or is it the other way round? Buetti’s images are subtle in that they are quite obviously fakes with a pretence to reality: when he sets up On All Knees in the Helmhaus in Zurich (2003) – where the whole interior of the building would seem to have been dragged out from some universal cataclysm – the suggested catastrophe is a convincing physical experience and yet clearly set-up in the sense of a walk-in film set. The Helmhaus piece is a chapter from the series Romantic World: Buetti openly acknowledges his empathy for romantic forms of expression, individuality and existentialism. However powerful the detailed images of the intervention may be, it is only in experiencing them in situ that the viewer can be absorbed in their awe and feel the full discomfort of their impact.

Buetti develops his work complexes during a number of years, exploring issues in a medium adapted from popular culture, specifically created for the subject. The header-name given to each work complex is an integral part of the piece; usually in English, it follows basic laws of global accessibility. Once Buetti feels that a particular area of concern has been completely exploited, he moves on. Sensitive to mass culture and headline issues, he subsequently builds up new aesthetic strategies for a campaign including new paradigma of what makes the world turn. Within this diversification of expression, his themes remain closely related. Characteristic of his work is a choice of unsophisticated materials and techniques: his practice includes cardboard, tape, wallpaper, party lights and decorations, household paint and the use of on-site situations. His source material he often finds in newspapers and magazines; It can also be inspired by TV series or movie films. The use of popular images from advertising enables the viewer to access his work on an emotional rather than an intellectual level. His visual catalogue of concerns touches on fashion, football, cataclysms, terrorism, beauty, love, death, religion, to mention only the major themes.

Daniele Buetti (born 1955 in Fribourg, Switzerland) is a visual artist working in various media, principally installation and intervention. His work includes photography, video, sound, drawing, sculpture, and digitally assisted work. Since 2004 he is professor at Münster Academy of Fine Arts. He lives and works in Zurich and Münster.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist and is cited by Graham Thompson as the first painter of African descent to become an international art star. He started as a graffiti writer in New York City, and in the 1980s produced Neo-expressionist painting. After Andy Warhol's death in 1987, Basquiat became increasingly isolated, and his drug use and depression increased. After attempting to quit heroin use during a trip to Hawaii, Basquiat died of a heroin overdose in his New York studio on August 12, 1988, at the age of 27.

Portraits by photographer Patrick Demarchelier

Born near Paris in 1943 to a modest family, Patrick Demarchelier spent his childhood in Le Havre with his mother and four brothers. For his seventeenth birthday, his stepfather brought him his first Eastman Kodak camera. Demarchelier learned how to develop film, retouch negatives and began shooting friends and weddings.

In 1975, he left Paris for New York to follow his girlfriend. He discovered fashion photography by working as a freelance photographer and learning and working with photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Terry King, and Jacque Guilbert. His work drew the attention of Elle, Marie Claire and 20 Ans Magazine

He later worked for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, first in September 1992 which resulted in a 12-year collaboration. Demarchelier shot international advertising campaigns for Dior, Louis Vuitton, Celine, TAG Heuer, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Lacoste, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren.

scetches by karen kiliminik

Karen Kilimnik (born 1955 in Philadelphia) is an American painter and installation artist.Karen Kilimnik trained at Temple University, Philadelphia.

Her installations reflected a young viewpoint of pop culture. An example of this work is her 1989 breakout The Hellfire Club Episode of the Avengers, which is composed of photocopied images, clothing, drawings, and other objects that reverentially embody the glamour, risk, and mod kitsch of the 1960s television show. The work exemplified the “scatter” style of her installations.

Her paintings, characterised by loose brushwork, bold colors and "thrift shop paint-by-numbers awkwardness", are pastiches of the Old Masters and often incorporate portraits of celebrities. In contrast to the celebrity portraits of Elizabeth Peyton, Kilimnik, "blends together Conceptual and performance art and 1980's appropriation with the current interest in female psychology and identity." Jonathan Jones described her portrait of Hugh Grant (1997) as, "a nice example of a relatively new genre of painting, which we might call the iconic portrait, not commissioned by its sitter but based on photographs, magazine cuttings, film clips."

Her work is variously described as "sharp and witty...an interesting exercise in conceptual control" and as "wan and whimsical...Why does anyone want to make them? Why does any self-respecting painter ever set out to be feeble?"

untitled by daniel morach

untitled by daniel morach

inkjet print on paper

amazing ed ruscha

Born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, Edward Ruscha was raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where his family moved in 1941. In 1956 he moved to Los Angeles to attend the Chouinard Art Institute, and had his first solo exhibition in 1963 at the Ferus Gallery. In 1973, Ruscha began showing his work with Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. He continues to live and work in Los Angeles, and currently shows with Gagosian Gallery.

Ruscha has consistently combined the cityscape of his adopted hometown with vernacular language to communicate a particular urban experience. Encompassing painting, drawing, photography, and artist's books, Ruscha's work holds the mirror up to the banality of urban life and gives order to the barrage of mass media-fed images and information that confronts us daily. Ruscha's early career as a graphic artist continues to strongly influence his aesthetic and thematic approach.

julian schnabel photgraphed by sante d'orazio

Julian Schnabel (born October 26, 1951) is an American artist and filmmaker.

Born in Brooklyn, New York City to Esta and Jack Schnabel, Schnabel moved with his family to Brownsville, Texas when still young. It was in Brownsville that he spent most of his formative years and where he took up surfing and resolved to be an artist. He received his B.F.A. at the University of Houston. After graduating, he sent an application to the independent study program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. His application included slides of his work sandwiched between two pieces of bread. He was admitted into the program. Schnabel worked as a short-order cook and frequented Max's Kansas City, a restaurant-nightclub, while he worked on his art. In 1975, Schnabel had his first solo show at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. Over the next few years he traveled frequently to Europe, where he was enormously impressed by the work of Antoni Gaudi, Cy Twombly and Joseph Beuys.

Schnabel lives in New York, maintaining studios in New York City and in Montauk on the eastern end of Long Island with a house in San Sebastian in Spain. He has three children by his first wife, clothing designer Jacqueline Beaurang: two daughters, Lola a painter and film-maker, Stella, a poet and actress and a son, Vito an art dealer.
He also has twin sons, Cy and Olmo, by his second wife, Spanish Basque actress and model Olatz López Garmendia. Garmendia appeared in Before Night Falls, and is also to be seen in The Diving Bell, as Bauby's physical therapist. Schnabel is fluent in Spanish. He also learned French to direct The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
360 West 11th Street is a former West Village horse stable that Schnabel purchased and converted for residential use, adding five luxury condominiums in the style of a Northern Italian palazzo. It is named the Palazzo Chupi and it easy to spot because it is painted pink.

Swiss Artist Sylvie Fleury

Swiss contemporary pop artist employing sculpture, mixed media. Her work addresses the issues of shopping, and the paradigm of the new age. Born 1961, Geneva.

painting by elizabeth peyton