Arts of Marilyn Manson

Manson claimed in a 2004 interview with i-D magazine to have begun his career as a watercolor painter in 1999 when he made five-minute concept pieces and sold them to drug dealers. On September 13-14, 2002, his first show, The Golden Age of Grotesque, was held at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Centre. Art in America's Max Henry likened them to the works of a ‘psychiatric patient given materials to use as therapy’ and said his work would never be taken seriously in a fine-art context, "the value was ‘in their celebrity, not the work’.[9] On September 14-15, 2004, Manson held a second exhibition on the first night in Paris and the second in Berlin. The show was named ‘Trismegistus’ which was also the title of the center piece of the exhibit – a large three headed Christ painted onto an antique wood panel from a portable embalmbers table.

Celebritarian Corporation is the name that Manson has given to his self proclaimed art movement. Manson has coined a slogan for the movement: “We will sell our shadow to those who stand within it.” In 2005 he said that the Celebritarian Corporation has been "incubating for seven years" which if correct would indicate that Celebritarian Corporation, in some form, started in 1998.[10] Manson has stated that he chose the name 'Celebritarian Corporation' because he believes that it provides "a further irony into what it represents", since the word Celebritarian could be construed as a pro-celebrity status.[citation needed]

Celebritarian Corporation is also the namesake of an art gallery owned by Marilyn Manson, called the Celebritarian Corporation Gallery of Fine Art in Los Angeles for which his third exhibition was the inaugural show. From April 2-17, 2007, Manson's recent works were on show at the Space 39 Modern & Contemporary in Florida. 40 pieces from this show travel to Germany's Gallery Brigitte Schenk in Cologne to be publicly exhibited from June 28 - July 28, 2007. Manson was refused the entrance to the Cologne Cathedral, better known under the German name Kölner Dom, when he was in the city to attend the opening night. This was, according to Manson, due to his makeup. Other sources gave different reasons, however.

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