Like it or not celebrity art is apparently all the range these days. We uncover our top ten unlikely celeb artists...
Ah, the humble, lowly celebrity. Not content with being talented, (or dubiously talented as the case may be) in their chosen field, or ludicrously loaded for that matter, celebrities occasionally do things that momentarily shock us (affairs, drugs, alcohol, head shaving) and then, perhaps less often, do things that surprise us. Certainly, in a world where famous bassists retreat to Oxfordshire cheese farms and roll their sleeves up in the curds and whey, and former actor/body-builder types become the 38th Governor of California, it seems anything goes. And in the art world, this is no exception.
But where vain pretenders already reside aplenty, alongside a whole host of struggling and emerging new talent, does the lucrative commercial value and whimsical passing fancies these celebrities present undermine the efforts of other artists of greater merit? Questions, questions – you decide. Quite frankly we don't really care; we're just more than a little bit curious. As the news that Anthony Hopkins has an exhibition opening in Mayfair this week, Spoonfed have decided to unearth a few more of these unlikely celebrity artists...
Anthony Hopkins
Where better to start than Oscar-winning cannibal-playing Sir Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins, who rather surprisingly considers himself a “shy artist”, apparently paints every day in his Malibu studio at the encouragement of his wife Stella, daubing surrealist and evocative landscape paintings. 50 of these abstract canvases, ink drawings and acrylic paintings will be on show at Gallery 27 until 20th February.
Peter Doherty
Doherty, with his trademark hypodermically thin-limbed physic, well-angled trilby and on/off drug habit has all the trappings of a tortured creative soul – and while perhaps his poetic and musical abilities have been proved in various ways – his rather controversial blood paintings might appeal to a slightly more niche crowd. To do him credit, these paintings do maximise his recreational talents splendidly and show off the troubled singer's nifty needlework a treat, with blood signed and splattered illustrations of Kate Moss.
Marilyn Manson
From one troubled singer to another, Manson's paintings have been described as “works of a psychiatric patient given materials to use as therapy”. Manson champions his own self-proclaimed art movement “Celebritarian Corporation”, the namesake of a gallery also owned by the star, under the slogan “we shall sell our shadow to those who stand within it”. Dark stuff.
Bob Dylan
His work has been compared to Degas, Van Gogh and Matisse, and with a semi-comparable price tag of £95-450,000 the singer's works went on display at the Halcyon Gallery last week, marking a climatic finale to Dylan's Drawn Blank series of works based on sketches made on the road between 1989 and 1992.
Sylvester Stallone
The icon of machismo and action hero sheds the Rocky-Rambo persona and reveals that he was in fact a painter at heart all along. Colourful, expressionistic paintings are Stallone's speciality. And he mustn't be doing that badly either; two pieces sold at Art Basel Miami last year for $90,000.
Ronnie Wood
It's staggering to think that Ronnie has any time to fit any painting in to his no-doubt time-consuming cradle-snatching efforts. Best known as lead guitarist for the Rolling Stones, Wood received formal training at Ealing College and has been painting, drawing and print making for 35 years, capturing legendary musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Madonna.
Michael Vaughan and Jack Russell
Last year Cricketer Michael Vaughan surprised us all with his 'artballing' collection From Crease to Canvas, ingenious formed by hitting a paint-covered ball at a white canvas. Vaughan seems to be following on in the footsteps of Jack Russell whose artistic talents are now recognised world-wide. Not only does his painting We Will Remember Them hang in the Tower of London, Russell now has his own gallery in Chipping Sodbury and exhibits his paintings of military battlefields and wildlife in London.
Mackenzie Crook
Actor Mackenzie Crook's sketches of his cast-mates in the West end show Jerusalem have made it into the programme. The modest Crook said of his illustrations: 'It feels really good to see them printed on nice glossy paper”. Well, who doesn't like a good glossy sheet after all?
Ronnie Kray
Who ever would have guessed it but eight paintings by notorious gangland criminal Ronnie Kray sold for almost £16,500 at auction in 2008. The oils were painted while Kray was an inmate of Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight.
Josh Hartnett
And last, but by no means least, we at Spoonfed love a bit of Josh Hartnett, and for good reason it seems. This man's a multi-talented genius. The teen heart-throb admitted that after filming 40 Days and 40 Nights he took a break to travel to Africa to brush up on his oil painting skills: “It relaxes me because it's just me and the canvas and there's no right or wrong way”. You said it Josh.
Sir Anthony Hopkins is at Gallery 27 from 17-20th February 2010.
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