At the gallery, he watched his works being installed. They looked almost delicate, with swashes of pink and yellow depicting the sunlight falling on flower petals, but they were big, hulking things. Two very large men visibly struggled, their bodies shaking with physical strain as they held up one of the smaller paintings in the show, adjusting its alignment by an inch. In another room, it took six men to install one of the larger works. Schnabel became giddy as he looked at the show — it was the first time he’d seen the paintings all together like this. He moved around, examining them close — “it looks very abstract at this range,” he said — and stepping back to take in the full view, where the collage of shattered dishware seemed to have the texture of a bundle of leaves.
“Chaos,” Schnabel said, surveying the room with a smile and sounding quite satisfied. “Organized chaos.”