Even the most scathing remark on celebrity art affirms its object: pictures made remarkable by the signature of an artist famous by other means. The finest of fine art painters must defend himself against the movie star hobbyist, not the other way around. Jim Carrey’s bad pop protest art. Sharon Stone’s perfunctory abstracts. Johnny Depp’s MSPaint Warhol imitations. Adrien Brody’s Times Square scammer pastiches of expired mass media, Warhol, Basquiat and Gonzalez-Torres. Ed Sheeran’s 4th period Pollocks. Celebrity art has a fugitive edge. Untrained, unverified, unapproved by any governing body. In no case is the celebrity more “just like everybody else” than in his mediocre artwork. In no case is the celebrity more unduly privileged than in his ability to command New York Times coverage of that mediocrity.
In the limited, consistent vocabulary of celebrity art AbEx, Pollock, Warhol and Basquiat really were the end of the road and all the rest is academic claptrap. Beyond the governance, grants and theories of the academy art stripped bare is movie stars screen-printing (more likely inkjet printing) copies of Marilyn Monroe.
Neither academicians nor movie star dabblers produce anything new. Credit is due to Sheeran for attempting no improvement or innovation in his enthusiastically rote Pollock imitations.
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