\u201cIt\u2019s very hard for a famous person or a powerful person to become a successful artist,\u201d says Marc Glimcher, president and chief executive of the international Pace Gallery. \u201cThere\u2019s no real history of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such is the plight of every Hollywood or pop A-lister who also yearns to become an art star. From the brushy landscapes of the legendary crooner Tony Bennett to the warped figurative sculptures of Brad Pitt, almost every celebrity\u2019s studio practice is met with scepticism by the art establishment. But a closer look reveals that viable paths to approval do exist. The devil is in the detail.<\/p>\n
One factor is which type of celebrity wants to cross over. Movie and pop stars turned artists have typically fared poorly among the art world\u2019s elites. In 2025, for instance, the street art-inspired canvases by Oscar-winning leading man Adrien Brody and the Jackson Pollock-indebted drip paintings by chart-topping troubadour Ed Sheeran received a scornful response from critics, as did a London solo show by singer Robbie Williams.\u00a0Although the obviousness of their influences contributed to the backlash, their station in the entertainment ecosystem likely mattered, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a very clear progression from filmmaking, which is a feast for the visual senses, to a fine art practice,\u201d says the art adviser Meredith Darrow. \u201cThe translation from music and acting to the visual arts, while valid, is more convoluted and therefore not as easy or clear for galleries and institutions to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
American collector Jeff Magid suggests a particular power dynamic may be at play. He wonders if the \u201clegacy art world\u201d may be \u201cmore willing to accept filmmakers as artists because they seem to them more like the boss in a film\u2019s hierarchy, whereas actors may seem to them more like paid employees in the service of someone else\u2019s creative vision\u201d.<\/p>\n
A double standard is at work: mainstream stars often get VIP treatment as art buyers but quick dismissals as art makers<\/p>\n
Indeed, a sizable and growing list of filmmakers has been embraced by galleries and museums with industry-wide credibility.\u00a0David Lynch, whose movie career grew out of his early education as a painter, is currently the subject of his second cross-disciplinary solo exhibition at Pace<\/a>, this time at its Berlin outpost (until March 29). Photographs, sculptures and multimedia works by John Waters \u2014 whose boundary-testing films earned him the nickname the \u201cPope of Trash\u201d \u2014 featured in a travelling survey organised by the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2018-19, as well as several gallery shows at Spr\u00fcth Magers.<\/p>\n The decorated indie writer-director Jim Jarmusch has exhibited collages at James Fuentes Gallery in New York and LA. Fuentes sees little separation between Jarmusch\u2019s lauded work in cinema and his collages: \u201cIt\u2019s the same hand, the same mind, a similar approach, just a different medium.\u201d\u00a0What\u2019s more, unlike the stars who unveil their artwork as a third-act plot twist, Jarmusch had been making his collages for more than 20 years before publicly exhibiting them.<\/p>\n Still, decades of dedication are not always enough to guarantee a celebrity\u2019s artwork will transcend their star power. Take Sylvester Stallone, whose painting practice began in the 1960s, and tends to centre expressionistically rendered figures (often strapping, shirtless men), bold colours and scrawled messages like \u201cOur little lives are big deals\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest barrier to entry is that people don\u2019t realise he was an artist long before he was an actor, writer or producer,\u201d says Shawn David, a partner and director at the Palm Beach gallery Provident Fine Art, which became the exclusive representative of Stallone\u2019s artwork in March 2025. \u201cHe always says, \u2018I\u2019m an artist who found celebrity through acting and writing, but I\u2019m an artist first\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Magid sees a double standard at work when mainstream stars intersect with the art establishment: they often get VIP treatment as art buyers but quick dismissals as art makers, both of which, he suggests, \u201cperpetuate the exclusionary class system that has kept the art world so small\u201d.<\/p>\n The kicker is that many of the celebrity artists locked out of the upper-echelon galleries, museums and art fairs are doing just fine in terms of sales. History shows that fame all but guarantees the cooperation of a dealer at some level of the market. A few even stock their inventory with works by multiple mainstream stars; C Parker Gallery, with locations in Manhattan and Greenwich, Connecticut, offers surprisingly whimsical lithographs by Muhammad Ali, pastel-hued abstractions by Sharon Stone and painterly still lifes by Bob Dylan, among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n A steady stream of buyers and regional institutions justify dealers\u2019 interest in celebrity-made art. David, of Provident Fine Art, said in late January that he had sold 25 of Stallone\u2019s paintings in the eight months prior, for prices up to $850,000. The Rocky multi-hyphenate has also been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Russian State Museum, France\u2019s Nice Museum of Contemporary Art and the Osthaus Museum in Hagen, Germany.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Sheeran wrote in an August 2025 Instagram post<\/a> that sales of his artwork had raised more than $1.25mn for charity. In 2023, Johnny Depp sold more than $3.6mn worth of prints<\/a> struck from portraits he\u2019d painted of celebrity friends and role models.<\/p>\n Whether they have resale value is murkier. Late-in-life paintings by Frank Sinatra have found buyers at auction 23 times since 2018 and soared as high as $137,500 (with fees), per Arthur Analytics. On the other hand, Stallone and Depp have only had three auction sales each over this time period, all for less than $16,500. To date, one Brody lot has sold under the hammer, for $1,548 (with fees) \u2014 which is one more than Sheeran or Stone has had.<\/p>\n So is this work pop culture kitsch \u2014 or a golden opportunity to expand art\u2019s appeal? The answer, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder. \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s about democratising our field a bit \u2014 which I\u2019m all for,\u201d Fuentes says. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think everyone is.\u201d<\/p>\n Find out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram<\/a>, Bluesky<\/a> and X<\/a>, and sign up<\/a> to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n