{"id":53019,"date":"2025-07-10T03:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T03:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/53019\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T03:00:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T03:00:15","slug":"ed-sheeran-is-ripping-off-jackson-pollock-with-his-paintings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/53019\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Sheeran Is Ripping Off Jackson Pollock with His Paintings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe singer Ed Sheeran<\/a> has topped the charts with his singles and sold out stadiums across the world, and now he looks to expand his output to include artworks that look suspiciously like Jackson Pollock<\/a>\u2018s drip paintings.<\/p>\n

\n\tSheeran is now showing his all-over abstractions at Heni Gallery in London, whose exhibition of them opens this Friday. They are officially titled the \u201cCosmic Carpark Paintings,\u201d and Sheeran\u2019s foundation is also selling prints of them for \u00a3900 ($1,200) each\u2014around $61.1 million less than the most expensive Pollock canvas ever sold at auction. <\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tFifty percent of the sales of those works will benefit schools across the UK, a cause that Sheeran has previously championed, saying that educational initiatives are systemically underfunded.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe told the Guardian<\/a> this week that he had making art for years, but his practice was only kickstarted during the past decade. \u201cI was back and forth on tour last year, and I used a lot of my downtime in the UK to paint,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d run to a disused car park in Soho each morning, paint, then run home and I\u2019d do that daily until I headed back out on tour again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe paintings bear more than a passing resemblance to Pollock\u2019s art. Most are composed of tangles of paint in various colors, and Sheeran made them by waving around a wet brush above a canvas placed on the floor\u2014just as Pollock himself once did. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Guardian article even includes an image of Sheeran in coveralls tossing red paint onto one of his canvases. The photograph seems to intentionally recall Hans Namuth\u2019s famed pictures and films<\/a> of Pollock at work.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut whereas Pollock\u2019s works were intended as formal experiments, with his unusual process meant to distance his hand from his canvas, Sheeran\u2019s don\u2019t seem quite so heady. A Heni release informs viewers that Sheeran\u2019s paintings are \u201cinspired by celestial patterns,\u201d and that these new works are \u201cin-keeping with his well-documented, expressionist splash painting style.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThat release notably does not mention Pollock. Lavender Mist<\/a> or Autumn Rhythm<\/a>, the \u201cCosmic Carpark Paintings\u201d are apparently not. One doubts that Clement Greenberg, possibly the greatest critic ever to take up Pollock\u2019s work, would have much to say about Sheeran\u2019s paintings were he still alive. <\/p>\n

\n\tAt least one high-profile critic has already eviscerated the Sheeran paintings. \u201cSheeran\u2019s art is a slick con job,\u201d wrote Jonathan Jones<\/a> in the Guardian. \u201cIn painting his light, meaningless abstract concoctions, he avoids proper scrutiny and dips a toe into art without putting himself on the line. What a pro, even when he is an amateur.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The singer Ed Sheeran has topped the charts with his singles and sold out stadiums across the world,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":53020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,33975,171,39509,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-53019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-ed-sheeran","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-jackson-pollock","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114826709583715283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}