We’re always keen to scope out celebrity painters, and so the buzz around movie star Adrien Brody’s latest attempts at art certainly twitched our antennae. The Oscar-winning star of The Brutalist is currently showing his newest works at Eden Gallery in New York (until 28 June). The series of mixed-media pieces are dotted with popular culture stalwarts such as Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe—even Jean-Michel Basquiat makes an appearance.
Intriguingly, rodents are a staple in Brody’s canon (Field Mouse, 2024). Why exactly? “I grew up in New York, where rats and mice were everywhere, and it's symbolic to me for many reasons. I always felt for the rats and the mice that I would see in the subways on the way to school—how everybody would be disgusted,” he tells Cultured magazine.
Brody’s art is receiving a mixed reception (to put it mildly). “Jesus, that’s bad….,” said a particularly harsh contributor on social media. “With its faux naïve aesthetic and its mediocre production value, Brody’s works beg the question: Why are we still talking about them?” asked ARTnews. The New York Times, meanwhile, features a rather readable profile and highly watchable video mash-up of the artist. The story sets the scene nicely with this epithet: “Adrien Brody, the Oscar-winning actor, is also Adrien Brody, the impassioned painter, is also Adrien Brody, the beats-mixing sound artist.”