Why Are So Many Celebrities Painting Now?
Photo illustration: by the cut; Photos: Getty Images
Something strange happens this summer in the art world. On top of tourists that the Louvre and chatgpt-helping at Versailles visitors communicate with images, Adrien Brody, Ed Sheeranand Bryce Dallas Howard Are at the recent celebrities to reveal that they would like to be recognized as painters. And while the reviews have been less than generous, which does not seem to stop them.
In june brody “made in America” at the Eden Gallery in Soho. Art news called the works “terrible.” Annie Armstrong wrote, “I can't stop thinking about how bad this art is,” both an insult and backed compliment. Yet the paintings sold, with one reported for $ 425,000 at Cannes. Brody got a new york Once profilein whining Interview Q & AAnd the kind of articles enlightenment and self-mythologage that usually comes to take seriously. (The Oscar he won he won this year before his turn in The brutality Sure didn't hurt.)
SHEERAN, Meanwhile, his paintings showed (abstract games in Sheeran appropriate colors such as red and orange) in a London Charity Exhibition to support muso education. The pieces reminded of 'receipts you need to see at a suburban pop-up gallery in a controversy space. A Guardian criticism The musician who works in a white hazmat suit, “if paint was radioactive material or sewage,” and dismissed Sheeran's homeless tribute to Pollock.
Photo: Dave Bettet / Amfar / Dave Benett / Amfar / Getty Images F
And then there is howard, who has taken a slightly serious approach to paint. She has told interviewers That she studies with the milan art institute, an online school that learns how to create and sell her art, while called what it calls up a “angel lower.” (One of the Side's slogans is “You are a culture warrior whose life is the victory that wins the war.”)
I wish I could say that most of the famous paintings have encountered, there are interesting, anti-foundations, but they are prone to be reluctant, and descended, and derivative. Still, even “bad” art is effective pr when it comes with a story. Bass's Paintings do not have to be good as they can be framed as an emotional raw, the product of years spent on Set, seeking Meaning or tortured artists. Sheeran's blotches are meaningful by charity and repetition. Howard has said that the process of watercolor painting If hobby helps them manage their mental health. They need no expertic technique if they have sincerity, a platform, and a decent publication.
These painpejects can just be creative despair or ways to kill time between jobs. I see them more as careful effort performances that prayer at transformation. They are easy to be saved – and have a lot of critics – but I often hit by celebrities that painting as a way to express that they have not to express the press or social media. If interviews are managed and instagram in chaotic, maybe a cloth can carry a softer missive. The gallery becomes his own kind of spotlight, and the message is clear: I've changedThe celebrity turned artistly tells us. See again.
The recent movement to the painting is especially often feels among male celebrities, many of those who are in the rehab. Brad Pitt is in a studio in La Soved Johnny Depp Sell cartoonish portraits or his “Friends and Heroes” (Think Al Pacino Pop Art). Jim Carrey Made a small career from the political paintings performed during the first Trump administration (he painted mangoes during Joe Biden's Presidency). Sylvester Stallone paint, and Pierce Brosnan is doing too. Whether their auditions are fully on taking them as artists to see, but I suggest that once they want to be known to do something sensitive with some feelings.
At the same time there are a pair of celebrities that are actual widely considered good artists. I asked a chic artist friend to weigh in Lucy Liuwho shown theirs their work on the name. Their paintings are composed, fat, and surprisingly technical. The same artist also pointed me to work of Jemima KirkeHe who studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and Paints Intimate Portraits and domestic scene with a ground emotional clarity. Of course, they then marked them David Lynch's Paintingsthose are like moody and surreal when you expect, and mentioned Dennis Hopperwho were both a documentary and an artist. She even allowed my secret admany that I like George W. Bush loves George W. Bush, who fall celebrated somewhere between naive and tirelessly deep. We agreed that his self portrait of His toes in the bath is strangely memorable even if we are free sure he does not realize that he is referred Frida kahlo.
More slowly than a podcast and more permanent than a Tweet, Celebrity painting is a prestige soft launch for rainvence. A show on the wall has gravitas, and even if work is mediocre, the effort creates, vulnerability, and a desire to see in a different way. Sure, these celebrities can be less about the art and more about the narrative the star shines about themselves. But at least they do not need to wait for someone else to tell her story if they can hang it on a wall and sell it for half a million dollars. In Wit-Cube Gallery is freshert than a press junk junk in the all.
