Three, as they say, is a trend — and we’ve got more than three recent examples of celebrity art exhibits, a distressing phenomenon. Especially, as in some cases, where galleries or companies are intertwined in the organization.
Let me say at the outset that I believe that some people are “twice talented”: Some people do achieve notable success in one area only to be recognized for their talent in another area, too — scientists, say, who can really play the piano at a professional level.
So it may be that Dennis Hopper, Leonard Nimoy and Jessica Lange are great photographers, and perhaps Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood and Bob Dylan really can paint. But I doubt that any of their work would be shown in museums, as they have been, are, or will soon be, if they weren’t celebrities already.
Hopper’s show, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, has been well-covered in the media — thanks also to the mini-celebrity status of museum director Jeffery Deitch. It’s supposedly curated by Julian Schnabel, but my sources say that at least two dealers — Tony Shrafrazi and Fred Hoffman — also had a hand in the organization.
Nimoy got his own lift recently when The New York Times featured him big-time in an article about his Secret Selves show at MASS MoCA:
…it is Mr. Nimoy’s first solo show at a major museum…Joseph C. Thompson, the director of Mass MoCA, writes, a little loftily, that despite a “haunting overabundance of id,” the photographs remind him of “caryatids — columns that cross-dress as figural sculpture.”
More important, the article continues: “…most [of the subjects] were rounded up by Richard Michelson, who owns a local gallery and is Mr. Nimoy’s primary dealer.” An example of Nimoy’s photos is at right.
Last fall, the National Gallery of Denmark said it would display about 100 of Dylan’s works, including 30 large-scale acylic paintings, this coming fall, according to Reuters. Interestingly, the article said, “Bob Dylan’s visual artistic practice has only been discussed by art historians to a limited extent so critical examination and interpretation are called for,” [Kasper] Monrad said in a statement released by Dylan’s Columbia Records label.” The record label made the announcement? Monrad is the Gallery’s chief curator.
Dylan’s works, btw, were first shown in 2007 at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz museum in Chemnitz, Germany. They went on view last year at a commercial gallery in London. That’s his Man on A Bridge above left.
On to the Rolling Stone: Beginning Sept. 21, the Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio will show 30 paintings and 22 drawings by the English rock ‘n’ roll musician Ronni Wood. Some of the paintings, according to The Independent, portray Mick Jagger and Keith Richards performing onstage. In one, “Beggars Banquet,” he shows “the rockers’ notorious wild parties, showing them in a Bacchanalian state of revelry.”
Butler director Dr. Louis Zona said: “Wood is a most accomplished painter whose work demonstrates a wonderful knowledge of the medium, outstanding technical abilities and an extraordinarily creative mind.”
A sample of that super talent, which looks akin to a painting of Elvis on velvet, is at left.
Lange, of course, had a show at the George Eastman House last year (see here), and seems slightly less egregious.
Who out there would argue that these artists are more deserving of shows that the many more fine, unshown, and unknown talents practicing art?
Where are museum and curatorial standards?
Photo credits: Courtesy of Columbia Records (top); of MASS MoCA (middle); of Ronni Wood (bottom).