Today, celebrities are collecting art more than ever, and the latest art that they seem to be collecting has shifted from old and modern masters to more and more contemporary stuff. Artists are collecting celebrities as well, but the big trend of the moment is that celebrities want to be artists and artists want to be celebrities.
Celebrities who collect art…
Elton John is a voracious collector of art, as he has accumulated most things in his life from clothes to cars. John’s collection includes many historic pioneers of photography that set about establishing camera work as a legitimate art form on par with painting and sculpture, such as Margaret Bourke-White, Man Ray, Imogen Cunningham, Alfred Stieglitz and others, which were shown together recently in a traveling museum show originating at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2000. Though photography is the principal focus of his collection (nearly 3000 pieces), it goes way beyond photos in scope and includes all varieties of contemporary art up to work produced by the latest hot young thing. It was another all consuming collector of contemporary that turned Elton on to art produced by younger practitioners and that was Gianni Versace, who escorted the singer to museums, galleries and churches the world over. At present, painters such as Julian Schnabel, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Philip Taaffe, Damien Hirst, Lisa Ruyter and it-girl, Cecily Brown, who paints sexually charged expressionist canvases, have augmented John’s photo collection.
Actress Julianne Moore recently moved into a widely publicized New York City apartment designed by Oliver Freundlich (the brother of her boyfriend, writer/director Bart). Julianne was so into her large-scale contemporary photo collection that the living space had to be created around the oversized individual pieces in her collection that includes work by Nan Goldin, Philip-Lorca di Corcia, Thomas Struth, Gregory Crewdson, and David Armstrong. It was the Struth, a German artist in his late forties, the subject of a recent retrospective at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, who’s work was responsible for necessitating the special treatment of having a giant wall constructed in the apartment. This may be the result of present photographers’ efforts to establish the equality of their work with super-sized paintings and sculptures, and other new art forms.
Leonardo DiCaprio first began looking at art in the mid-nineties. Under the guidance of art adviser Patrick Callery Leo bought a portrait of rapper Biggie Smalls prophetically depicted amidst tombstones in a cemetery by rock and celebrity photographer Michael Lavine and a couple of minor Jean-Michel Basquiats. Leo also bought the work of Christian Schumann, a young painter educated at the Art Institute of San Francisco in the style of cartoons mixed with elements of academic realism. Schumann’s paintings reflect an MTV sensibility of jump-cut edits and wildly colorful pop imagery lifted from record album covers, incorporating a soup of other elements like text and geometric abstraction.
Other celebrities who collect with a passion include the sublimely beautiful Gwyneth Paltrow, who collects similarly demure art my modern masters such as Richard Diebenkorn, and Agnes Martin and equally subtle monochromatic paintings by the younger artist Robert Reynolds. Cameron Diaz is into the previously mentioned overtly sexual paintings by Cecily Brown (no surprise there), Courtney Love has purchased paintings by knowing naïve painter and installation artist Karen Kilimnik and Matt Dillon has purchased a Luc Tuymans, among many more contemporary pieces. Tom Ford helped sponsor artist Ann Hamiliton’s contribution to the 2001 Venice Biennial, and has collaborated with and collected Vanessa Beecroft’s sexually explicit (frontal nudity, anyway) photos. Even the rapping set is getting into it with Damon Dash, Jay-Z’s partner in Roc-a-fella Records and Roc-a-wear, recently purchasing art by Graham Gillmore, Donald Baechler, (UK Turner Prize winner) Keith Tyson and more. Dash is even contemplating opening a gallery.
A young artist who has managed to be collected by many celebrities is Eric White, a painter of realistic but distorted images in the vein of surrealism. White has exhibited in Los Angeles’ La Luz de Jesus, a store/gallery that has attracted the likes of David and Patricia Arquette, and by extension Courtney Cox who later commissioned White to paint David, Kidada Jones (one of Quincy’s daughters), Viggo Mortensen, and Leonardo DiCaprio. White’s work was brought to Leo’s attention by his father George, a self-described hippie and a former cartoon distributor, which helps account for the love of cartoons in his art. Now Leo owns more than a half dozen of White’s canvases bought from a few thousand dollars to nearly $15,000. Maybe Leo’s attraction to art with cartoons also has to do with the fact he is still very young, collects toys and avidly plays video games. Art with such imagery is a way to continue to hang on to being a kid or a red flag signifying immaturity.
Donald Baechler is a 46-year-old artist who incorporates an outsider art sensibility with regard to his paintings, drawings and sculptures. He is a master of capturing a childlike innocence in composing a painting that many try to copy but none as successfully. Picasso said anyone can learn to paint but it takes a lifetime to learn to paint like a child. What is not outsider about the work is the audience Baechler actively cultivates to patronize his art including Elton John, Bono, Claudia Schiffer, Owen Wilson, Valentino, Versace, Johnny Depp, Dennis Hopper, Ellen Barkin, Stephanie Seymour, Lauren Hutton, Yoko Ono, a close friend and supporter of the artist, and by extension Sean Lennon and Bijou Phillips (who both have Baechler’s of their own). Consequently, Baechler has proved to be as successful an artist as he is a star bleeper.
In addition to these artists who are collected and who collect celebrities, there are some artists who would rather be those actors, musicians, and directors themselves. In this category are artists such as Julian Schnabel who is directing his third movie (on surfing, a love of the portly auteur), Damien Hirst, the anarchistic artist as debauched punk rocker, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, and David Salle, guilty of directing a horrible movie apiece, and Brit art star Tracey Emin, guilty of being herself.
Artist Keith Edmier is not a celebrity… yet, but he certainly came up with a fanciful notion on how to at least get him closer to one, thisclose in fact. Thanks are due to the Art Production Fund which made this fantasy a reality, and a farfetched one at that, and the Los Angeles County Museum for exhibiting this masterful mating of celebrity and art(ist). As set forth in the press release that accompanied this exhibit in November of 2002 to February 2003, Edmier “grew up in the 1970’s, when Farrah Fawcett’s star began to rise and she became the central female icon of his childhood as well as the rest of the world’s.” This bit of prose could be translated to: Edmier, born in 1967, had the famed framed poster of a bathing suit clad Farrah in his boyhood room and had to wait till his art school education could be utilized to concoct a scenario outrageous enough to accomplish their coupling, artistic and otherwise, for that is what really happened, really, as reported in noted art magazine The National Enquirer, along with other more credible journals.
There are also celebrities who go from collecting to making art including Steve Martin, who, after establishing himself as a “wild and crazy guy” on Saturday Night Live, cavorting manically as if suffering from an epileptic seizure, went on to build a collection of Impressionists like George Seurat, and modern masters such as Picasso, Edward Hopper, David Hockney, and Francis Bacon. Martin even put on an exhibition of his art collection at the Bellagio (the esteemed gallery at the hotel and casino). On the path to transitioning from slapstick comic to esthete, Martin wrote the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, a “comedy” about a hypothetical meeting between Picasso and Einstein. It appeared that as Martin grew more comfortable with the mantle of seasoned art collector, his tastes have grown more contemporary, with acquisitions by dirty comic book artist R. Crumb, fellow comedian/artist Martin Mull, and most recently a watercolor by Tim Gardner, who paints academically realistic pictures of fraternity pals drunk beyond the point of no return. Maybe now Martin feels confident and comfortable enough in his collecting shoes to return to a sensibility that matches his crude, collegiate comedic roots.
David Bowie has metamorphosed from anything goes androgyny into art impresario. Bowie’s tastes have switched from collecting the likes of Rubens, Tintoretto, Balthus and traditional UK expressionists such as Graham Sutherland and Stanley Spencer, to Damien Hirst, and -lo and behold- to becoming an artistic innovator (or rather, imitator) himself. Being the budding dabbler and entrepreneur, Bowie employed the famous Do-It-Yourself mentality of the Brits to begin producing his own art (see www.bowieart.com) The paintings Bowie began to exhibit in galleries in addition to his website looked like primitive African renderings or bad Basquiats. At present on the website there are 6 x 8 inch portraits for US$3,500, and a single sculpture of an African chess piece. Bowie had the piece remade large from a sidewalk purchase in Mombassa, Africa in a “shiny expensive looking material, directly influenced by Jeff Koons”. Now that’s touching considering the local artisan who probably barely survives from having to actually carve and sell the chess sets himself. What makes matters even more exploitative in Bowie’s act of appropriation is his final description of the process: “It was a way of sealing forever my experiences and the present events in my life.” If ever there was a lovelier testament to the transformative and transcending nature of art.
Another celebrity experimenting with art, unbeknownst to even his closest friends, is Christopher Walken who has been making drawings and the like for over 20 years but has until this time showed them, or even spoken about them to no one. Doesn’t that conjure images of a creepy, mad scientist bent over a steaming cauldron creating alchemy? Apparently all that is about to change, as Walken is on the verge of taking off his smock and making these mystery pictures from the mystery man himself available for public viewing.
And now, ladies and gentleman, Madonna has thrown her hat into the art-making arena. Indeed, the road traveled by Madge has mirrored that of other celebrities, i.e. buying newer and newer art and then making the realization that hey, I could do that! Billed as one of the year’s “most anticipated exhibits”, X-STaTIC PRo=CeSS (it wasn’t easy to pass the brilliant concoction through spell-check), a collaboration just transpired at New York’s Jeffrey Deitch Gallery between Madonna and photographer Steven Klein. Klein’s intention was to work with Madonna as a “performance artist… creating a situation where she could respond directly to the camera without constraint.” What was the Sex book about, snippets from her prudish family album? “The project is not about photography of celebrity, but about the person and the passions beneath the surface. Klein sees Madonna as a messenger, asking people to wake up and confront the dehumanizing forces in the contemporary world.” Honey can you get the door, a messenger is here, and she, uh, looks like Madonna. She says she is here to jolt you from your complacency and get you to take some actions against the world’s injustice. “Rather than the packaged glamour that one might expect from the collaboration of a pop star and a top fashion photographer, the work is raw and menacing. The spirit is apocalyptic” Not to sound too disbelieving, but a photograph of Madonna folded into a position where she could engage in an untold sexual act with herself brings to mind many visions none of which I am afraid is all too menacing or apocalyptic, even when projected onto a wall. According to the gallery, that’s “religious passion and sexual charge” for you.
After Warhol made a career out of making icons out of celebrities, artists now would rather be those actors and musicians (and directors, too) themselves rather than paint them and, who would have ever thought that in the search for more meaning in their lives, actors and musicians now want to be artists. The grass is always greener.
Kenny Schachter