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the schnab
Of course, Schnabel’s West Village building is an entirely different kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, or total artwork, but it is born from the same fervent attitude that makes Giotto’s blue-backed frescoes so unforgettable. It also owes a huge debt, which Schnabel freely acknowledges, to two American architects: Addison Mizner and Stanford White. Schnabel’s experience with both architects’ work is personal and direct. He has rented a Mizner house in Florida in the past, and owns an 1880s fishing “cottage” by White in Montauk, on Long Island, where Schnabel spends lots of time painting and surfing. The West 11th Street building abounds in nods to both architects, all of them put through the Schnabel strainer. He’ll take a Mizner fireplace, for instance, and create a pumped-up version by, in his words, “putting some balls on it.” Likewise, the kitchens in each of the Chupi residences—with their board-and-batten wooden ceilings, emerald-green terra-cotta tiles, and cast-concrete countertops dyed chromium-oxide green—are straight out of Schnabel’s Montauk house, though re-tuned. None of this is simple mimicry. What’s interesting is how Schnabel mixes references to White and Mizner into a global iconography, including Moorish, Turkish, and Venetian touches, motifs the architects were attracted to themselves.