“We avoided like the devil anything that would make this a Hollywood thing”.
—Mathias Rastorfer
How easy would it be for you to sell your art if you were a public figure starring in the most popular movies or giving huge live performances?
Public relations are key in making an artistic work relevant in the market; however, sometimes PR doesn’t work as expected. Stanley Martin Liever, also known as Stan Lee, dreamt about becoming a great writer. For him, comics were just a way of making a living. He was sick of creating comic cartoons like Millie the Model or western strips like Kid Colt Outlaw. He wanted to be like his greatest idols: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Robert Louis Stevenson. However, after creating The Fantastic Four, he realized his work as a comic artist could take him places beyond his expectations.
Cases like Stan Lee who stopped following his childhood dreams but managed to succeed in other areas aren’t that common. Many actors, singers, and celebrities in general would love to be recognized for their artistic skills rather than their looks, work in commercial movies, or sexual scandals. Here are some of the celebrities who have tried to make a name for themselves in the artistic world:
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Adrien Brody
Being the youngest winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor wasn’t enough for The Pianist’s protagonist. Adrien Brody assures that holding a brush and painting has become the best therapy to vent his ethical and aesthetic concerns. As the son of two artists, he has always lived surrounded by art. Many critics have compared his work to Andy Warhol’s. Described as “apocalyptic art,” his pieces raise awareness on the environmental damage made by men.
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Viggo Mortensen
Mortensen’s skills in different artistic disciplines have amazed the world. Although he’s been a photographer since he was 10 years old, he’s also a painter, makes collages, and writes poetry. Besides his acting skills, Mortensen has stated that taking photographs and making music are his real passions. Some of his paintings appeared in the movie A Perfect Murder, where he starred in 1998.
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Marilyn Manson
Just as his musical and acting works, Marilyn Manson’s art pieces are terrifyingly weird. He began creating watercolor paintings in 1997. Although many of them have been highly criticized by many who consider them as naïve and vague proposals, many of his late paintings show an evolution in his craft. Manson paints as a hobby, but many of his friends have advised him to exhibit them due to their rareness.
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Shia LaBeouf
Shia LaBeouf is one of the most criticized and spurned artists nowadays. Many have made a mockery of his performances, which have been considered a joke. In fact, after starring in Disney series or franchises like Transformers, Shia is one of the most important representatives of metamodernism, a current that intends to make sense through mistakes. Actually, showing ridiculous and ironic performances is an essential part of this artistic movement.
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Lady Gaga
Besides her talent as a singer and actress, Lady Gaga is an art lover. She has maintained that her main inspiration comes from performance artists like Yoko Ono and Marina Abramovi
ć. In fact, before becoming a famous singer, she had already collaborated with some artists like Abramović.
One of her most famous performances took place in 2014, at the South by Southwest Festival.
It consisted on her yelling and playing the drums while Millie Brown– a famous performance artist– threw up a green substance on her. Then they rode a sort of mechanical bull while singing and convulsing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKAD_VJRWmI
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Lucy Liu
Besides her well-known career as an actress, Lucy Liu has been an artist. She studied at the New York Studio School where she worked under the pseudonym of Yu Ling. One of her most important installations is Seventy-Two, consisting of 72 small pieces painted with dark colors that represent the names of 72 gods.
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Sylvester Stalonne
Stallone’s paintings are extremely passionate. Starting when he was only eight years old, his first portrait showed a man in the jungle. With over 400 paintings, he has exhibited at the
Galerie Contemporaine du Musée de Nice in France. Although many have questioned the artistic value of his work, the commercial director of the Galería Gmurzynka, Mathias Rastorfer, has stated that when he first heard Stalone was a painter he thought: “When you hear about it for the first time, you think, ‘Ah yes, one of the Hollywood painters.’ So the whole point of a serious gallery showing someone like Sylvester Stallone was to show what’s possible in art, and to make this a serious endeavor and not a society endeavor.”
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James Franco
James Franco is one of the most multifaceted actors nowadays. Besides being a successful actor, he’s also a professor at the University of California (UCLA) and the New York University (NYU). Moreover, he’s a musician, poet, director, curator, and, of course, painter. He appeared at The Artist is Present, a documentary film by Marina
Abramović. He’s also curated an exhibition about Alfred Hitchcock and produced a video in which he makes a reinterpretation of Della Robbia. He has organized individual exhibitions where he showcased his artwork.
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Being a Hollywood actor or actress and an artist at the same time is seen as the worst combination possible. Before people see the work they immediately peg it as overrated. It makes us wonder if the artistic community is so tightly knit that it is prone to a prejudiced mentality.
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Translated by María Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards
