Julian Schnabel’s loathsome personage is endlessly amusing—and this great profile in the Telegraph is delicious. It’s definitely worth reading the whole thing, but here’s a couple passages:

Critics villified him as a huckster who personified the bloated, mercantile avarice of the age. Robert Hughes was particularly hostile: ‘Schnabel is to painting’, he wrote in 1987, ‘what Stallone is to acting - a lurching display of oily pectorals - except that Schnabel makes bigger public claims for himself’ - a reference, perhaps, to Schnabel’s famous declaration that ‘I’m as close to Picasso as you are going to get in this fucking life.’

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He says ‘Cigarette, por favor’ to no-one in particular (in a way that might be taken as self-mocking; or might not). An assistant scurries to provide one….Now he dismisses the photographer. Schnabel removes his overcoat and lolls, pasha-like, on the sofa, the top buttons of his pajamas undone to reveal a fleshy, hairy chest. A maid brings tea. His cell-phone rings - a cicada-like trill. Schnabel answers it, brings the conversation to a quick close, but doesn’t turn off his phone; it rings persistently throughout our conversation.