It came to my attention, a few minutes before hitching my bathrobe up, lighting the Cuban dangling from my yaw, and settling down to write this column (in the bathroom), that Steven Soderbergh has decided to shift his medium midstream, in the build-up to his latest, and most marketed film yet, Contagion, and become an artist. Like Outbreak before it, Contagion is a disease film starring basically every popular actor of its time—Outbreak starred Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman, Cuba Gooding, Jr.; Contagion has Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Naturally, I thought, in metaphor, “It seems like an outbreak of celebrities becoming artists these days. But what is the contagion?” Sigh.

      A few years ago, in another life, at a different (and perhaps not nearly as cool) magazine, I edited on an article about the paintings of John Squire for my Editor-in-Chief. For those familiar with the Brit-Pop scene, you’ll recognize the name as that of the guitarist for the Stone Roses, a particularly boring example of that most stillborn genre of music. Needless to say, I wasn’t a fan of the paintings either, all splattery Jackson Pollock retreads. But it did raise a rather interesting topic that day I fought tooth and nail—as a lover of art—to exclude him from the magazine: sometimes a career is unfulfilling, and art is a discipline which can lead to fulfillment. Should you handle it with care. I lost the battle of John Squire, but won the war when the pages came out looking atrocious and literally no one cared. Alas, Squire continues to insist on painting to this day, never again to play in a rock band, perhaps a testament to the maturity an artist evokes versus the dunderheadedness a rocker emits. 

     To be fair, Squire’s paintings have progressed beyond Pollock-ian splatters to more complicated, codified patterns. But that’s besides the point, or maybe it accentuates the point. The point is, Squire leapfrogged a couple of career obstacles by being a famous painter before really being a painter at all.

     In previous issues of this magazine, loyal reader, I have touched upon the Dennis Hopper at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles show, as well as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s counterpoint Tim Burton show. The benefits reaped by the institutions are quantifiable in terms of tickets sold, and, truth be told, celebrities are easier to market, regardless of whether their art is up to snuff. It rarely is. But there remains a yearning in the celebrity to become an artist. The reasons are myriad, but it all boils down to one thing: respect. An elite community of critical thinkers respects art. Art is remembered, canonized, held high in lofty lightbeams brighter than any spotlight at a film premiere. Mainstream film, on the other hand, has been commoditized beyond all semblance of art. For a film to be produced, it needs to go through dozens of executives to get financed. It needs to have the right cast, script, blah blah blah—you know the drill. For a piece of art to get made, one needs not much more than an idea.

     From Crispin Glover’s nightmarish “Clowny Clown Clown” video to Leonard Nimoy’s photographs of plump women, celebrities are constantly trying to break free from their contraptions. Some use their celebrity as a pole to vault their way to freedom, while others, such as the offbeat character actor and stage comedian Martin Mull, have built semi-respectable art careers without much fanfare. Some are taunted by mediocrity, and some will never be able to escape the shadow of their celebrity. Take Tipper Gore for example. She has set up a web page for her photography, which includes portraits of Rwandan children, flowery still lifes, and insider-y snapshots of political situations. The photos are altogether not that bad, if a little scattered, unfocused, and commercial. But, the fact remains, if Tipper Gore wanted to gain critical respect, it would be an impossibility. Imagine Tipper Gore, the face of censorship, being flayed by a critic with an idealistic sense that art should push boundaries.

     An early example of the artist-via-celebrity crossover, Tony Curtis, the male lead in Some Like It Hot, became a painter in the 1980s, culminating in the acquisition of his painting, “The Red Table,” by MoMA in 2005. His work was studious of Van Gogh and Matisse, which is to say, it was good for an actor. Therein lies the rub: how does one escape the “good for a” asterisk. 

      A few examples of transcendence are recorded. Mull is one of these, and though I wouldn’t say I love his paintings, he regularly shows at reputable galleries. Viggo Mortensen is an interesting example, because he is both a leading man (The Road, several David Cronenberg films) and an articulate artist. His gritty abstract paintings and photography may be stuck in the ‘80s, but they’re not bad. Marilyn Manson’s watercolors are predictably disquieting and moribund—I’d be more shocked if they were bright and cheery—and he invaded Art Basel Miami Beach in 2008, because that’s, well, the Waterloo where one invades should they want to gain acceptance with their art.

     And like Napoleon, it all comes across as a bit try-hard. Perhaps celebrities should take a cue from Dennis Hopper, who has gained the most acceptance in the art world out of any celebrity. Hopper, who actually reached moderate success as a photographer in the 1960s, before his acting career took off, is the exception that proves the rule. He utilized his role in the acting world as a milieu, and his photographs from various sets in the 1960s have gained a certain mythic quality to them—and a mythic quality counts for something in the art world (I’m looking at you, James Turrell). Perhaps Hopper is the one celebrity whose work, though it deals in celebrity, is transfixed with celebrity, and glorifies celebrity, is strong enough to stand on its own two legs away from the crutch of celebrity. 

      Dennis Hopper’s son, Henry, who lives quietly out west in Venice, follows in his father’s hallowed footsteps. Henry has spent considerable time with art world luminaries such as Jonas Mekas and agnès b., and seems to be picking up steam as a painter. He recently starred in Gus Van Sant’s Restless as the erstwhile lover of a girl (Mia Wasikowska) dying of cancer. At the same time he was filming, Henry was facing his father’s deterioration and eventual succumbing to cancer, and in some ways, his starring in a film dealing with cancer exudes an artistic rigor. In any case, Henry Hopper has absorbed some of his father’s mysterious magic, and the art world, as well as the film world, awaits his every move.

      Van Sant himself recently showed a series of paintings at Gagosian Beverly Hills, a two man show with James Franco, who, due to the fact that he is creating artworks within this magazine, needn’t even be mentioned. Van Sant’s paintings at Gago were of young men, a subject he is intimately familiar with. His works show an empathy for the condition of such young men, and in doing so, are successful from a critical standpoint; the caveat being that Van Sant receives focus, and portrait artists who are much more successful don’t, because Gus Van Sant, the artist, is also Gus Van Sant, the film director. 

      That brings us full circle, back to Soderbergh. Given, Soderbergh is going to finish four movies in production, but the fact remains, Steven Soderbergh, the film director, is preparing to become a former filmmaker, for he is now a Painter (note the capital P). Perhaps tipping his hand, Soderbergh quips to The New York Times: “I’ll be the first person to say if I can’t be any good at it and run out of money I’ll be back making another Ocean’s movie.” Sorry, kid at Pratt: you don’t have that fallback luxury.