The Luxembourg & Dayan gallery kicked off its show Salvatore Scarpitta 1956-64 on 13 October with a VIP preview that included a toast by Julian Schnabel. The film-maker and painter said that the textural paintings by his friend, who died in 2007, needed to be seen, if only for their interplay with contemporary works by Joseph Beuys, Cy Twombly and Lucio Fontana. “It takes time to see someone’s work,” he said. “Sometimes you don’t get to see it until they die. I was reading this book that said artists don’t get paid weekly, they don’t get paid monthly—they get paid posthumously.”
Schnabel and Scarpitta were so close that it is rumoured that Schnabel named his son Vito after Scarpitta’s dog. “No, that’s not true,” Schnabel said after the speech. “Vito is named after Vito Corleone.” Schnabel seems to be a big fan of Marlon Brando, who played the title role of the head of the Corleone clan in the movie The Godfather. He went on to add that his daughter Stella was named after Brando’s famous bellow as Stanley of his onscreen wife’s name in A Streetcar Named Desire.