Julian Schnabel's paintings, sculptures, and works on paper have been the subject of retrospective exhibitions at The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Tate Gallery, London; The Whitechapel Gallery, London; The Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Stadtische Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf; The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Museo De Monterrey, Mexico; The Tamayo Museum, Mexico City; The Foundation Joan Miro, Barcelona; and Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, Italy. His work is included in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Guggenheim Museums, New York and Bilbao; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Gallery, London; The Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo; The Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; The National Gallery, Washington D.C.; and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. In addition to his success in the fine arts, Schnabel is also the writer and director of the feature film Basquiat (1996) and director of the critically acclaimed Before Night Falls (2001). He lives in New York City.

Designed by Julian Schnabel, this volume presents more than 300 of the artist's works - many never exhibited or published before. Beginning with Schnabel's earliest sketches and paintings from the late-1960s, the book moves on to his rise to the top of the art world of the 1980s, with works such as "Portrait of Andy Warhol" from 1982 (one of many critically acclaimed broken-plate paintings included here) and "Pope Clement of Rome" from 1987. The book then covers Schnabel's later paintings, including the massively scaled "Big Girls" series, and work in photography, sculpture and film. More artist scrapbook than monograph, the book's text consists of telling excerpts from Schnabel's own interviews, essays and notes, along with works of poetry and fiction that have inspired his work.