Art Galleries London: Julian Schnabel, Pace Gallery London

This spring, one of the best art galleries London has to offer showcases their first solo presentation by Julian Schnabel – the legendary painter turned film director who started as the avant-garde poster boy for New York’s exploding art scene in the 1980s.

Titled, Julian Schnabel: The re-use of 2017 by 2018. The re-use of Christmas, birthdays. The re-use of a joke. The re-use of air and water., the twelve paintings on show take inspiration from a set of calendar prints by Royal Academy artists William Hamilton (1751–1801) and Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815) that Schnabel discovered at a second-hand store in his native New York City.

Enlarging the 18th century pastoral scenes onto polyester and painting over them, Schnabel initiates a playful historical conflict of imagery: 'The prints are reinterpreted just as all yesterdays and todays are', the artist commented.

The exhibition is housed in the quiet grandeur of Pace’s Burlington Gardens site, now crucially shared with the New Royal Academy. Coinciding with the RA’s monumental 250th anniversary and the grand opening of its new spaces, the exhibition aptly celebrates Schnabel’s previous election as an Honorary Royal Academician in 2009, and traces a profound line of legacy from the old masters of the past to the cutting edge art of the present.