In the years before the mid-1980s art market boom, Schnabel forged a pictorial language that embraced
unconventional methods and materials with a visceral effect; he
introduced to the American contemporary art scene a particularly European post-war sensibility through his admiration for Francis Picabia and his personal artistic dialogue with Sigmar Polke and Blinky Palermo; and he broke with the prevailing conceptualism through figuration, personal narratives and references to history and mythology.