American artist and film-maker Julian Schnabel lived up to his eccentric reputation by showing up at a posh Gucci cocktail party in his trademark pyjamas, and with a string shopping bag.

Schnabel won the 2007 Gucci Group Award given every year on the sidelines of the Venice Festival to a director, actor, screenwriter, set or costume designer who has made a remarkable contribution to a movie in the previous 18 months.

Schnabel scooped the award for the brilliant and moving “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, which already earned him the prize for best director in Cannes this year. The film tells the true-life story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, an editor of French magazine “Elle” who suffered a massive stroke at 43 and was left paralysed from head to toe except for his left eye, which became his only means of communication with the outside world. The film is almost entirely told from that eye.

In Venice, Schnabel is presenting a documentary about Lou Reed’s album “Berlin”, which stunned critics and fans alike when it first came out in 1973 and was deemed by many to be the one of the most depressing albums ever made. The singer could not be in Venice for “personal circumstances”, he explained in a statement.