In the flesh, US artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel bears little resemblance to the arrogant person the press has made him out to be.
While he's definitely opinionated, there isn't a whiff of the 'monumental sense of self-importance' for which he is notorious. In fact, he came across as warm, funny and charismatically eccentric when he addressed a Hong Kong Art School (HKAS) audience last week.
The 56-year-old was in town to open an exhibition of his works, and was brought over jointly by entrepreneur David Tang Wing-cheung, Katie de Tilly of 10 Chancery Lane Gallery and the Fortune Cookie Project. Schnabel's show runs until November 24 and is the second leg of an 'Asian tour', which began in Beijing in September. It moves on to Shanghai in January and concludes in Seoul next March.
'I like the idea [of bringing] art to places,' Schnabel says at the talk organised by HKAS' Pamela Kember. He then asks how many in the room have seen his works in person. Not many. 'You should,' he says.
Indeed, it's only when standing in front of his massive canvases does one get a sense of not only the scale of the pieces - some measuring 2.5 by 3 metres - but also the raw texture of the media applied on the paintings.
His Portrait of Olatz (right) and Portrait of Olatz with Cy ( his second wife and twin son) with oil, plates and Bondo (polyester resin) on wood, for instance, are beautiful to look at close up and from afar. The uneven surface gives the works both extra depth and dimension.
It's also a style that propelled him to mega-stardom - and extreme excess - almost 30 years ago.