“Beyond Fame”
From Pete Doherty to Harald Glööcker: when stars make art
Harald Glööckler the artist with his works at the opening of the art exhibition “Beyond Fame. The Art of the Stars”
© Picture Alliance
More and more successful musicians, actors or athletes are discovering their artistic streak. Most people have never seen the inside of an art academy. Nevertheless, their works are worth seeing.
Rock star Bryan Adams photographs homeless people, Libertines frontman Pete Doherty creates collages from music lyrics or blood, Wimbledon winner Michael Stich paints abstract pictures on Japanese paper, rapper Samy Deluxe spray-paints walls and ancient radio cassette recorders with garish graffiti. And Green Party politician Anton Hofreiter, best known for his loud calls for Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, paints brightly colored landscapes with tulips.
Pete Doherty, Michale Stich and co are self-taught
Doherty, Stich or Hofreiter don’t have much in common in their professional careers, but they have one thing in common: They all make art. The Düsseldorf NRW Forum has now compiled the works of 18 celebrities from music, theatre, sports, politics, fashion and advertising and turned them into an art exhibition. From Friday to January 21, 2024, photos, paintings, videos and installations by international and national celebrities can be seen under the title “Art der Stars. Beyond Fame”.
Most of the celebrity artists are self-taught and have never seen the inside of an academy. Nevertheless, some of them made the breakthrough in the new profession and also made names for themselves as artists. They often live out their creativity in several areas at the same time.
“A music career is fully organized,” says the once scandalous Libertines frontman Doherty in Düsseldorf, who incidentally, as the son of a British officer, went to school in the NRW state capital for a few years. His career in art, on the other hand, was “unpredictable and chaotic,” said the 44-year-old. He sometimes made his collages while on tour and also used music lyrics or spoons with leftovers.
Doherty reveals that he had a problem with drugs. That’s why he painted with blood. But now he is “clean”. And so Doherty poses in front of his pictures in a bohemian gray suit with a tie and a flower on his lapels, with his mixed-breed dog Gladys at his side. But he still makes music, he emphasizes. The Libertines have just recorded a new album.
Various paintings and sculptures by Peter Doherty can be seen in the “Beyond Fame” exhibition
© Picture Alliance
Multi-creativity is also Lea Draeger’s trademark: not only is she a member of the ensemble at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, she also writes books and has been working for several years on a series of drawings of popes that now number over 6,000 the size of stamps. In doing so, she processes, among other things, the religiosity of her own family and the patriarchal system. A whole room is furnished with the finely drawn miniatures of the Pope. Each tells a different story.
Sport and art – both can be creative activities
Even athletes sometimes find their way to art. According to ex-tennis professional Stich, that’s not such a long way off. Both – tennis and art – are creative activities, he says. And both play in a given space: tennis on a field delimited by lines, art on the delimited canvas. In both areas “I can do whatever I want,” says the 54-year-old. Stich has been collecting art himself for years and also studied art history for two semesters. The former national soccer player Josephine Henning processes her former job partly artistically: she has the life-size sculpture of a soccer player with colorful remains of Sports and cleated shoes pasted. In Henning’s surreal nude painting, in which the torso is an alarm clock, the connection to sport is then dissolved.
Naive-looking still lifes with everyday objects are shown by Wolfgang Niedecken’s daughter Isis-Maria Niedecken. A black room is pompously furnished with wild dripping images and all sorts of kitsch by fashion designer Harald Glööckler. Things get macabre with the video installations by Jean-Remy von Matt. The entrepreneur and copywriter demonstrates human transience. Exhibition visitors can kneel on a black pew and enter their age on a display. An oversized hourglass appears in front of them, trickling relentlessly.
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Even con artist Anna “Delvey” Sorokin has dabbled in art. In New York, she swindled her way through high society for years until she was exposed and ended up in prison. In prison she built up an art business. Sorokin is said to be selling her self-painted little pictures, some of which can be seen in the exhibition, with titles like “No one is safe” or “Sneaking around in Prada” for thousands of dollars – and can thus continue to finance her life of luxury.