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Telegraph
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Why do celebrities think they can paint? Here's our pick of the worst
The double Oscar -winning actor Adrien Brody is rightly celebrated for his on-screen talents, even if there is some truth to the grumblings that he only really excels when he plays Holocaust victims. Yet before, during and after winning his second Oscar, for the magnificent drama The Brutalist, he seems to have been on a personal mission to behave in as obnoxious a fashion as possible. At the Oscars, for example, he caused much revulsion by throwing a piece of used chewing gum at his partner Georgina Chapman so she could hold it while he made his rambling, arrogant acceptance speech But Brody isn't just an actor; he is also an artist, or at least would like to be regarded as such. He is currently displaying a solo show, entitled Made in America, at New York's prestigious Eden Gallery that has been afforded all the accoutrements that a major art-world figure would merit. A lengthy profile piece in the New York Times, fawning news items about his selling one of his artworks, of Marilyn Monroe, for $425,000 at the amfAR gala in Cannes and an elevated degree of respect because of his existing fame. Part of this art, we learn, once again involves chewing gum. Visitors to Made in America are invited to take a piece of gum from a pre-packaged pile, chew it, and then stick it onto a canvas that is festooned with the word 'Violence.' A sign on the wall declares 'Leave your mark—messy, visceral, and anonymous'. This is one way of looking at it. Another way is to suggest that, in a contemporary art world that seems to have gone stark raving mad – Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian, in which a banana duct-taped to a wall sold for $6.2 million last year at Sotheby's, was quite literally bananas – the cachet brought in by an A-list celebrity makes apparently dreadful artworks seem both respectable and newsworthy. Brody's exhibition poses as a deconstruction of much-loved pop icons such as the Simpsons and Mickey Mouse, appearing to homage such New York legends as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Unfortunately, Made in America has been panned in the American and international art press on the grounds that Brody isn't a talented artist, despite his beliefs otherwise. 'Why do great actors have so much trouble when they venture into visual art?' asked Artnet critic Annie Armstrong, who attended the opening. 'Can you name one who has been able to bridge the gap?' She concluded: 'It feels uncanny to see an artist who is so successful in one medium be so flat-footed in another.' Still, it did not help that Brody approached this with maximum pomposity. At Cannes, while presenting his Monroe canvas, he indignantly shushed the audience during a lengthy introductory speech. 'I've painted and drawn most of my whole life,' he declared. 'Painting precedes acting for me.' In another interview in 2016 with the Huffington Post, he remarked: 'Maybe I am vain, to a certain extent, but the purpose of doing this is far from vanity.' Most would disagree with his summation. Still, in the actor's defence, he is far from the only celebrity who has dabbled in the world of art to disastrous or embarrassing effect. Everyone from the late Val Kilmer to Jim Carrey has, at one time or another, decided that they were capable of producing artworks of lasting impact and effect, enabled by a crowd of sycophants and excitable fans. Almost inevitably, the result has been the same; well-known figures have produced mediocre art – at best – that looks like something that a middling GCSE student might come up with as coursework. Whether it's Carrey's truly shameful pictures of 'Jesus Electric' and Melania Trump, Kilmer's self-aggrandising portrait of Jim Morrison (a homage to the man he played, to far greater effect, in Oliver Stone's biopic The Doors) or Sylvester Stallone's Rocky-inspired The Arena, the consistent impression that virtually anyone would have when seeing these 'artworks' is a profound wish that their creators don't give up the day job. Actors who paint tend to take what they do so very seriously, and most actors who do see themselves as artists tend to be exactly the kind of characters you would expect – Johnny Depp, Viggo Mortensen, Marlon Brando, etc. Sir Anthony Hopkins, however, is a refreshing exception to this rule. He may be one of the finest thespians that Britain has ever produced, but his bizarre, vaguely psychedelic paintings – George, for instance, depicts a vast purple elephant – seem like an elaborate joke. Which it probably is. 'Painting is something I really enjoy, like playing the piano,' Hopkins has said. 'I have a lot of fun with it. I just paint for the sheer enjoyment of it.' This sense of fun is sorely lacking from the more po-faced practitioners. Sharon Stone's abstract, sub-Rothko works, entitled things like It's My Garden, Asshole, appear to exist less to sell for the $40,000 that she charges for some of her canvases, and more for feminist empowerment. As she put it, 'It's my job to open a window for other women and hold it open further.' Likewise, if you look at the monochrome splodges that the actress Lucy Liu appears to specialise in, you will have been missing the point of how from the 'painterly, fleshy nudes to delicate depictions of the human spine in resin or embroidery, Lucy Liu's art lays bare themes of intimacy, belonging and memory.' It makes the relatively accessible and pleasant-looking work of Tony Curtis – which was ridiculed during the actor's lifetime – all the more bearable, although even here, Curtis was not immune to delusions of pseudery. 'When I paint, I don't paint shapes, I paint colours,' he once said. Yet is the desire to create art limited to actors. Musicians have also dabbled in the field, to mixed effect. Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood's paintings of him and his Rolling Stones bandmates have an appealing energy to them (let's ignore his 'nude studies', which have a different kind of energy) and there are many people who rate Bob Dylan's paintings and sculpture, which he was demonstrating as far back as the cover of 1970's Self Portrait album. Others have fared less well. David Bowie and Paul McCartney may be the two greatest post-war British musicians, but neither of them managed to persuade the art world that their own work was of any special significance, whether it was Bowie's alternately haunting and embarrassing Francis Bacon-esque studies or Macca's dreadful daubs. The late Brian Sewell had it about right when he said of the latter that they were 'a self-indulgent impertinence so far from art that the art critic has no suitable words for them – they are, indeed, beneath criticism.' Still, works on canvas are one kind of dreadfulness, but when celebrities veer into performance art, matters worsen inexorably. There are those who believe that Shia LaBeouf is an overlooked genius, others – especially post-Megalopolis – that he is simply a mediocre actor who is addicted to attention-seeking. Such actions as turning up at the premiere of Nymphomaniac in 2014 with a paper bag on his head saying 'I am not famous any more' and watching all his films in reverse order for the #ALLMYMOVIES project may have been original, but they also felt like the showily demonstrative actions of a bored has-been star. And let's not even get onto James Franco, whose smug, self-congratulatory blurring of boundaries between reality and fiction came crashing down in 2021 when he admitted allegations of sexual coercion with students at his acting school. Few miss Franco's once-ubiquitous, forever-irritating presence in public life, during which art was just one of the means he used to torment us. He once commented that he had been painting longer than he had been acting, which sounded like a threat of some kind. At least Robbie Williams, whose current solo show Radical Honesty ('expanding his visual language of sarcasm, self-deprecation, and playful irreverence), refuses to take this stuff seriously. Which is just as well, given that one critic described it as 'an Instagram self-help quote attacking your brain and eyes….incredibly bad art: so earnest, so superficial, it's barely even funny.' There have been a few more successful celebrities involved in the world of art, including Edward G Robinson, a Hollywood tough guy star from the Thirties and Forties and the legendary horror star Vincent Price, although both of these men were more notable as enthusiastic and prodigious collectors than for their own painting. This willingness to step back and let other, more talented artists take the limelight reflected well on them. Today, the Brodys and Carreys and McCartneys produce their terrible, vainglorious work and expect someone impressed by their fame to pay vast sums of money for them. The real tragedy is that, so far, they haven't been disappointed. Brody's exhibition may have been called Made in America, but this worship of celebrity excess is, alas, a global phenomenon, and it shows no signs of dissipating any time soon. Perhaps the solution is to send in the hardy protesters of Just Stop Oil, armed with paint and knives, and see what happens then. If it resulted in a few irreparably damaged works of celebrity hubris, I doubt that too many people would be truly devastated. The five worst celebrity artworks 1. Jim Carrey, Jesus Electric, 2017 The actor Jim Carrey recently claimed to have found God and Christianity, and stated that 'The energy that surrounds Jesus is electric. I don't know if Jesus is real, I don't know if he lived, I don't know what he means. But the paintings of Jesus are really my desire to convey Christ-consciousness.' This would be fine, if the Bruce Almighty star's representation of his idol's electric energy wasn't so embarrassingly redolent of the kind of paintings that you see for sale on a dodgy-looking stall in Camden Market. Such is Carrey's clout that he even made a short documentary about the painting's creation, called I Needed Colour; perhaps it should have been called I Needed A Better Agent, given how mired he is in Super Mario Bros films these days. 2. Adrien Brody, Hooked, 2016 Brody's most recent pictures and installations have been soundly and deservedly ridiculed, but some of his earlier work might be even worse – which, I suppose, is a back-handed way of saying he might be getting better. One Warhol-inspired display of fish in four different colours was embarrassing itself on his own terms, but worsened by Brody claiming, straight-faced, that 'If we look closely, we are the fish. We are the ones 'hooked' as we consume with abandon…the fragility and beauty and uniqueness of fish is much like our own spirit and spiritual state.' It makes Eric Cantona's discussion of fish and trawlers look like the last word in profundity. 3. Shia LaBeouf, #IAMSORRY, 2014 Describing Shia LaBeouf's performance artworks as 'good' or 'bad' is not really fair; 'embarrassing' and 'shameful' would be closer to the mark. Yet when he embarked on a five-day stint in a Los Angeles gallery of wearing his 'I am not famous any more' bag on his head, inviting members of the public to interact with him, one participant went rather too far. As LaBeouf later recalled, 'One woman who came with her boyfriend, who was outside the door when this happened, whipped my legs for 10 minutes and then stripped my clothing and proceeded to rape me.' After LaBeouf's girlfriend learnt of this, 'she came in [and] asked for an explanation, and I couldn't speak, so we both sat with this unexplained trauma silently. It was painful.' LaBeouf never pressed any criminal charges, suggesting that this piece of suffering for his art was simply part of the job. 4. Paul McCartney, Unfinished Symphony, 1993 Paul McCartney has always chafed against the idea that he was the 'safe' or somehow predictable Beatle in comparison to John Lennon, frequently bigging up his avant-garde and experimental credentials. Musically, this might well be true, but when it comes to his art, it can be found wanting. This painting, which might kindly be described as his attempt to capture on canvas what A Day in the Life's crescendo did musically, will seem to most as an ugly, Pollock-lite splurge of horrible colours all jumbled together. McCartney remarked of it that 'It is very spontaneous, I don't think there was a lot of thinking about that. But, you know, my composition generally is spontaneous. Some people I talk to will ask, 'Do you do sketches beforehand?' And I will say, 'No, it is alla prima.' You know, I just love to play around with the paint and let the paint show me the way, and I sense they are not as impressed if they think I did it spontaneously.' Perhaps a little less spontaneity may have been welcome here. 5. James Franco, Army Pants, 2011 It now seems incredible to think that James Franco – last seen popping up in French-language blockbusters as the villain – was once one of the hottest actors in Hollywood, an Oscar-nominated star who could (apparently) do no wrong. How else to explain the indulgence that he was offered when it came to producing such ugly, cluttered artworks as the frankly horrible Army Pants. It sold for just over $8000 when it was last offered for auction in 2023; a mere fraction of the work of other celebrity artists, and an indication of how steeply his reputation has fallen.
Khaleej Times
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
Adrien Brody returns with bold art exhibition 'Made in America'
'I'm a little in a daze,' actor Adrien Brody said at the end of May, the skin around his eyes slightly crinkled, but his gaze soft and present. He'd been up since 5am and had spent most of his day crouched on the ground at Eden Gallery in Manhattan, putting the finishing touches on his collages ahead of the opening of his latest solo exhibition, 'Made in America.' The floors and walls were covered with canvases, themselves covered with old newspaper advertisements, erratic splashes of graffiti and darkly rendered cartoon characters. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe were in attendance. As were the Hamburglar and a toy soldier. In a nearby corner was an empty gum wall, soon to be covered in wads of chewing gum straight from the mouths of attendees in an interactive 'expression of rebellion and decay,' according to the wall text. Adrien Brody, the Oscar-winning actor, is also Adrien Brody, the impassioned painter, is also Adrien Brody, the beats-mixing sound artist. Those mediums converge in a collection of more than 30 works. Accompanied by Brody's soundscapes, the show features large mixed media art in what he calls an autobiographical display of the gritty New York of his youth, and the culture of violence and intolerance today. It's an approach that has been met with some derision both in the art press and on social media. 'Made in America,' on view until June 28, also includes photographs of and by his mother, acclaimed Hungarian American photographer Sylvia Plachy — a role model for Brody, who was never formally trained in visual art. It's been nearly a decade since Brody, 52, last showed his work publicly, at Art Basel Miami. So why now? 'I'm an unemployed actor at the moment,' he said with a half smile. Though it's difficult to picture Brody as unemployed, especially when which his artworks sell for six figures, this isn't untrue. The last film Brody shot was in 2023, 'The Brutalist,' for which he won the best actor Oscar this year, and nothing definite is lined up next. 'I know that if I don't do it now, I won't do it for another long period of time,' he said of the show. 'It's kind of this time to let it go.' Brody has been steadily working on his collages for the past decade. In the fallow periods, yearslong stretches when he wasn't landing the acting roles he yearned for, he turned inward and painted. The method in all of his mediums, he said, is a combination of layering (be it the incorporation of studied hand mannerisms for his character in 'The Pianist' or the added thumps for a recorded track) and peeling back (using chemicals to degrade paint for a visual work; stripping away pretenses as an actor). Brody, who credits his mother as his greatest artistic inspiration, grew up accompanying Plachy on photo expeditions as she chronicled the city's beauty and chaos on assignments for The Village Voice, where she worked for 30 years. In her darkroom, set up in their home attic in Queens, they would talk to each other through the curtain while she developed her photographs, moving the images from tray to tray, swirling them around in Dektol. 'He still associates me with those bad chemicals,' she said, laughing. His father, Elliot Brody, was also a painter but focused on his career as a teacher. It was onto Plachy's discarded photo prints that Brody began painting as a child. 'He used to be the son of Sylvia Plachy,' she said warmly. 'Now I'm the mother of Adrien Brody!' As a teenager, Brody attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts for drama, after being rejected for visual arts. 'It was a good thing, obviously,' he said. 'I'd definitely be a starving artist, most likely, if I didn't have an acting career. So it's funny how that happened.' On weekdays he took four trains from his home in Woodhaven, Queens, to get to school, and on his long commute became enamoured with the graffitied walls and etched tags on the plastic windows — a city 'bursting with energy and aggression' of a different time, he said. In 'Made in America,' many works feature a cartoon — Lisa Simpson or Yosemite Sam or Bugs Bunny — brandishing a weapon. It's a depiction of the violence Brody said he grew up with culturally: an American diet of toy guns, video games and McDonald's. 'What we're fed as children is constant imagery of ubiquitous violence,' he said. 'I think that there are repercussions to that, and we are experiencing those.' In Brody's vermin series, oversized black and white images of rats appear to pixelate behind street art tags. People are 'either grossed out by them, or they are antagonistic toward them,' Brody said of the scores of rats in New York City. 'And I always felt like, 'Why doesn't anybody see what they're going through?' Weirdly, I really kind of feel for them.' That compassion, he said, comes from his mother. Plachy's sensitivity toward animals rubbed off on him. So much so that he's had a pet rat. Twice. The first he bought as a child and then gifted to a friend; the second, a few years ago, belonged to the daughter of his girlfriend, Georgina Chapman. 'They're forced to kind of hide and scurry about and forge for themselves, and are being poisoned by this kind of campaign to eradicate them,' he said. 'And people are nasty to them and that always bothered me.' Sitting outside the gallery the day before the opening, Brody looked down at his hands, covered in acrylic paint. 'It's a lot of pressure to reveal this,' he said. 'I've literally been hiding the works.' 'Hiding maybe isn't the right word,' he added, 'but working quietly for a very long time and not showing, intentionally, to kind of develop this and do it at my pace. And so this is kind of ripping a Band-Aid off.'
Straits Times
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody unveils art show in New York
Adrien Brody and his mother Sylvia Plachy at his solo exhibition at Eden Gallery in New York, on May 31. PHOTO: SAM HELLMANN/NYTIMES NEW YORK – 'I'm a little in a daze,' actor Adrien Brody said recently, the skin around his eyes slightly crinkled, but his gaze soft and present. He had been up since 5am and had spent most of his day crouched on the ground at Eden Gallery in Manhattan, putting the finishing touches on his collages ahead of the next evening's opening of his latest solo exhibition, Made In America. The floors and walls were covered with canvases, themselves covered with old newspaper advertisements, erratic splashes of graffiti and darkly rendered cartoon characters. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe were in attendance. As were the Hamburglar and a toy soldier. In a nearby corner was a gum wall, soon to be covered in wads of chewing gum straight from the mouths of attendees in an interactive 'expression of rebellion and decay', according to the wall text. Adrien Brody, the Oscar-winning actor, is also Adrien Brody, the impassioned painter, is also Adrien Brody, the beats-mixing sound artiste. Those mediums converge in a collection of more than 30 works. Accompanied by Brody's soundscapes, the show features large mixed-media art in what he calls an autobiographical display of the gritty New York of his youth, and the culture of violence and intolerance today. It is an approach that has been met with some derision both in the art press and on social media. Made In America, on view until June 28, also includes photographs of and by his mother, acclaimed Hungarian-American photographer Sylvia Plachy – a role model for Brody, who was never formally trained in visual art. A gum wall by Adrien Brody for his art exhibition, Made In America. PHOTO: SAM HELLMANN/NYTIMES It has been nearly a decade since Brody, 52, last showed his work publicly, at Art Basel Miami. So, why now? 'I'm an unemployed actor at the moment,' he said with a half smile. Though it is difficult to picture Brody as unemployed, especially when his artworks sell for six figures, this is not untrue. The last film Brody shot was in 2023 – The Brutalist, for which he won the best actor Oscar in 2025 – and nothing definite is lined up next. 'I know that if I don't do it now, I won't do it for another long period of time,' he said of the show. 'It's kind of time to let it go.' Adrien Brody's solo exhibition Made In America at New York's Eden Gallery is his first art exhibition in nearly a decade. PHOTO: SAM HELLMANN/NYTIMES Brody had been steadily working on his collages for the past decade. In the fallow periods, years-long stretches when he was not landing the acting roles he yearned for, he turned inwards and painted. The method in all of his mediums, he said, is a combination of layering – be it the incorporation of studied hand mannerisms for his character in The Pianist (2002) or the added thumps for a recorded track – and peeling back, such as using chemicals to degrade paint for a visual work. Brody, who credits his mother as his greatest artistic inspiration, grew up accompanying Plachy on photo expeditions as she chronicled the city's beauty and chaos on assignments for The Village Voice, where she worked for 30 years. 'He came along and he saw the world,' said Plachy, 82. In her darkroom, set up in their home attic in Queens, they would talk to each other through the curtain while she developed her photographs, moving the images from tray to tray, swirling them around in Dektol. 'He still associates me with those bad chemicals,' she said, laughing. Adrien Brody and his mother Sylvia Plachy at the gallery. PHOTO: SAM HELLMANN/NYTIMES His father, Elliot Brody, was also a painter, but focused on his career as a teacher. It was onto Plachy's discarded photo prints that Brody began painting as a child. As a teenager, Brody attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts for drama, after being rejected for visual arts. 'It was a good thing, obviously,' he said. 'I'd definitely be a starving artist, most likely, if I didn't have an acting career. So, it's funny ho w that happened.' In Made In America, many works feature a cartoon character – Lisa Simpson or Yosemite Sam or Bugs Bunny – brandishing a weapon. It is a depiction of the violence Brody said he grew up with culturally: an American diet of toy guns, video games an d McDonald's. In Brody's vermin series, oversized black-and-white images of rats appear to pixelate behind street art tags. People are 'either grossed out by them or they are antagonistic towards them', Brody said of the scores of rats in New York City. 'And I always felt like, 'Why doesn't anybody see what they're going through?' Weirdly, I really kind of feel for them.' Rats feature in Adrien Brody's artworks. PHOTO: SAM HELLMANN/NYTIMES That compassion, he said, comes from his mother. Plachy's sensitivity towards animals rubbed off on him. So much so that he has had a pet rat – twice. The first he bought as a child and then gifted to a friend. The second, a few years ago, belonged to the daughter of his girlfriend, designer-actress Georgina Chapman. 'They're forced to kind of hide and scurry about and forage for themselves ,' he said. 'And people are nasty to them and that always bothered me.' That message, though, appears to be muddied in its reception. 'Brody is trying to do something with mice and rats, but there's no attempt to marshal this imagery towards contemporary critique,' professor of art history Claire Bishop at the CUNY Graduate Center said in an e-mail, calling his collages 'too pretty and too even' and 'lacking bite'. 'To say they look like AI-generated images resulting from search terms '19 90s LES graffiti', ' Americana' and 'Disney nostalgia' would be too generous,' she added . 'What they actually resemble is the kind of sanitised street art that's sold on 53rd Street outside MoMA or on the sidewalk in SoHo – work aimed at tourists seeking an arty yet unchallenging New York souvenir.' And viewers on social media have not taken too kindly to Brody's painterly side. In May , one of his creations, a blue-eyeshadowed Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood sign poking out behind a puff of her blonde hair, sold at the amfAR Gala Cannes for US$425,000 (S$546,600) . The painting became a source of mockery online, and drew criticism for being derivative. Adrien Brody preparing for his art show at the gallery Gallery. PHOTO: SAM HELLMANN/NYTIMES But Brody has his defenders. 'He's real,' said Eden Gallery's chief executive Guy Klimovsky. 'He is himself.' 'Yes, people will come because it's him,' he added, 'but they will forget. Because when I see an artwork, without knowing who made it, the artworks are rich. They're interesting. They have a story connection to the US, the story of the US, to the icon of the US.' It is all part of being an artist, his mother said. 'I think when you stick your neck out into the world, you'll have good and bad comments and that's the risk of it,' Plachy said. Sitting outside the gallery the day before the opening, Brody looked down at his hands, covered in acrylic paint. 'It's a lot of pressure to reveal this,' he said. 'I've literally been hiding the works.' 'Hiding maybe isn't the right word,' he added, 'but working quietly for a very long time and not showing, intentionally, to kind of develop this and do it at my pace. And so this is kind of ripping a Band-Aid off.' NYTIMES Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
New York Times
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Adrien Brody Feels for the Rats
'I'm a little in a daze,' the actor Adrien Brody said last Tuesday, the skin around his eyes slightly crinkled, but his gaze soft and present. He'd been up since 5 a.m. and had spent most of his day crouched on the ground at Eden Gallery in Manhattan, putting the finishing touches on his collages ahead of the next evening's opening of his latest solo exhibition, 'Made in America.' The floors and walls were covered with canvases, themselves covered with old newspaper advertisements, erratic splashes of graffiti and darkly rendered cartoon characters. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe were in attendance. As were the Hamburglar and a toy soldier. In a nearby corner was an empty gum wall, soon to be covered in wads of chewing gum straight from the mouths of attendees in an interactive 'expression of rebellion and decay,' according to the wall text. Adrien Brody, the Oscar-winning actor, is also Adrien Brody, the impassioned painter, is also Adrien Brody, the beats-mixing sound artist. Those mediums converge in a collection of more than 30 works. Accompanied by Brody's soundscapes, the show features large mixed media art in what he calls an autobiographical display of the gritty New York of his youth, and the culture of violence and intolerance today. It's an approach that has been met with some derision both in the art press and on social media. 'Made in America,' on view until June 28, also includes photographs of and by his mother, the acclaimed Hungarian American photographer Sylvia Plachy — a role model for Brody, who was never formally trained in visual art. It's been nearly a decade since Brody, 52, last showed his work publicly, at Art Basel Miami. So why now? Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Malaysian Reserve
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Malaysian Reserve
Eden Gallery bucks the contemporary art biz model
New York City's Eden Gallery is making money selling works by artists who have yet to discover a resale market by JAMES TARMY ON A recent weekday afternoon in New York, a cleaning woman in all black stood in the Fifth Avenue window of Eden Gallery dusting a very large bronze purse. Created by the artist Roman Feral and priced at US$400,000 (RM1.73 billion), the larger-than-life replica of a crocodile Hermes Birkin bag featured a cluster of monochrome butterflies emerging from its depths. Inside the gallery, other artworks had similar brand affiliations. There was a digital print by the artist Gal Yosef depicting Winnie the Pooh wearing a Louis Vuitton T-shirt and holding a honey pot filled with US$100 bills; a painting by the artist Angelo Accardi that features, among other figures, Disney's Aladdin standing next to a red Ferrari; and a Swarovski crystal- covered sculpture of a very large Balmain perfume bottle by the artist Metis Atash. The gallery features works that tend to incorporate symbols of pop culture (Star Wars, luxury brands, Disney) as well as very bright colours. Eden Gallery CEO Guy Martinovsky said the gallery is actually shifting focus away from brand-oriented imagery. 'I can show you artworks where there's no brands at all,' he said. 'Too often people just use brands for opportunism, and we're trying to move away from that more and more.' Regardless, much of the art on the wall seemed to be marching to the beat of a different drum than, say, mega gallery Hauser & Wirth. 'I always listen to collectors and not to what other galleries are doing, what museums are expecting, what the art world is expect- ing,' said Eden Gallery founder and sole owner Cathia Klimovsky. Unsurprisingly then, Eden Gallery is not a gallery in the same mould as many of its traditional counterparts, which typically mount single, month-long exhibitions that fill their entire space. Should a person want to buy a work, they have to wait until a show is over; historically, the only places where so-called 'cash and carry' occurs is at an art fair. Eden Gallery, in contrast, showcases a cacophony of work by a variety of artists. Pride of place at the Fifth Avenue location seemed to go to the star street artist Alec Monopoly, whose paintings, sculptures and prints — nearly all of which include the cartoon Monopoly man — have earned him a massive following. It's easy enough for people in the broader art world to sneer at this aesthetic, but it's harder to argue with its success, particularly as the art market continues to suffer. In 2024, the market slumped 12% by value to US$57.5 billion, an Art Basel and UBS Group AG market report found. Art deal- ers collectively sold 6% less by value year over year; and sales the year before that fell by 3%, accord- ing to the report. By contrast, the leaders of Eden Gallery said that it's thriving. Along with the Fifth Avenue gallery, which covers 20,000 sq ft across three floors, it has a four-storey, 25,000 sq ft gallery in SoHo and a 10,000 sq ft gallery on Madison Avenue. It also has outposts in Aspen, Miami, London, Dubai, Las Vegas and the Maldives, where a showroom sits inside of a Waldorf Astoria on Ithaafushi Island. Annual revenue has 'eight zeroes', said Martinovsky. 'In the last 10 years we grew by 25% a year on average,' he said, attributing the success to the company's business model. That model, simply put, is retail — the same as nearby luxury boutiques on Fifth Avenue. '[This] could be Christian Dior SE or Louis Vuitton, but it's Eden Gallery,' Martinovsky said. That sounds like bluster, but Martinovsky said that 50% of the gallery's revenue comes from people simply walking in off the street, something absolutely unheard of in the contemporary art world. 'Call it a store,' said Klimovsky. 'But the art market is following us.' Prices in the gallery generally range from US$2,000 for a print to about US$800,000 for a major sculpture. Most of Eden Gallery's revenue is derived from work priced between US$25,000 and US$250,000, Martinovsky said. A quarter of a million dollars is not much in the broader contemporary art market, where paintings regularly sell for millions of dollars at auction. But Eden Gallery's comparatively low price point explains and underscores how different it is from a standard gallery. That's because those Chelsea institutions do their best to cultivate their artists' reputations (and prices) through a standard playbook of commissioning books and scholarship, supporting museum shows, and, perhaps most important, propping up an artist's resale market. This is particularly true when it comes to very expensive artworks: If you buy a painting for US$1 million, you want some kind of assurance it will still be worth US$1 million when you decide to sell. With the exception of Alec Monopoly, Eden Gallery's artists, in contrast, don't have visible resale markets to speak of. Roman Feral, of the bronze Birkin, has never had a work sold at auction, for instance, according to the Artnet database. Neither has Atash, of the bejewelled Balmain bottle. Accardi, whose painting depicted Aladdin and the Ferrari, has seen his work come to auction three times; two of the three lots failed to sell. Once Eden Gallery sells a work, there is a very good chance its value has gone to zero, at least in the short term. Martinovsky brushed this aside, saying that Andy Warhol's secondary market didn't take off until he was in his 50s, and that many of Eden Gallery's artists are much younger. 'The classic journey was auction houses, museums, major private collections, top renowned art fairs,' he wrote in a follow-up email. 'Today, an artist can establish himself, become very successful, and have his retail price raised organically and consistently, just because of the balance between the offer and the demand.' Plus, he added, people sell art when they don't like it anymore — and Eden Gallery's clients really love what they buy. 'Many of our clients simply don't sell the art. They want to live with it.' — Bloomberg This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition
