Meet Marilyn Manson the Painter
Marilyn Manson will make his debut as a visual artist on September
19th, when he unveils more than forty watercolors at the Los
Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Among the works are nudes, a
portrait of a child with a gun, and an image of himself as Mickey
Mouse.
“I’ve not gone out of my way to be offensive,” says Manson.
“They might expect me to have painted in my own shit or
something.”
Critics will be the judge of that. “They’re a lot like Red
Skelton’s paintings,” says David A. Greene, a critic for
Dwell and England’s Modern Painters magazine.
“They all look like him.”
Two paintings capture Manson’s views of different stages of
life. Of “Hand of Glory,” a portrait of a young boy holding a doll,
Manson says, “There is a fine line between being childish or
holding onto your childish imagination in just the right way. This
painting has a bit of that. It was never meant to be a portrait of
myself but a symbol of the sadness of sometimes not being able to
do what you want to do.”
“When I Get Old” depicts an old man drinking from a cup. “The
old bald man drinking the glass of absinthe is kind of inspired by
William S. Burroughs and how I imagine myself to be when I am old,”
Manson says. “That’s how I’d like to see myself if I live to be
that age.”