Entertainment

The Modern "Art" War Is Officially On

by Alanna Bennett

Today is a hectic week for utterly pretentious, deeply silly celebrity performance art. It kicked off when Shia LaBeouf walked out of the Nymphomaniac press conference at the Berlin Film Festival and then proceeded to the red carpet that night with a paper bag reading "I AM NO LONGER FAMOUS" secured over his head. Now he's camped out at an art gallery in Los Angeles crying at people in the name of art — and Jerry O'Connell's just set up a rival art installation next door. We have a feeling, thought, that O'Connell may be a bit more purposefully on the side of the "deeply silly" than LaBeouf's.

Some background: Following the press that resulted from his paper bag antics in Berlin, LaBeouf returned to Los Angeles and set up camp in a Beverly Blvd. art gallery. It was there that he proceeded to continue to wear that paper bag whilst staring into the eyes of/weeping at entertainment journalists. Here's a bit from Vulture's Kyle Buchanan's memorable and surreal account of his own time experiencing LaBeouf's art show:

And so I sit across from Shia LaBeouf with our hands intertwined and resting on the pink ukelele, the actor's gaze constant and growing wetter until tears start to fall from his eyes, sliding down the brown paper bag over those messy, scrawled capital letters. He rubs my hand with his thumb as he weeps.

News of LaBeouf's artistic endeavor immediately swept the Internet, and so of course immediately illicited response. Cue actor Jerry O'Connell (Stand By Me, Burning Love, Pirhana 3D, the upcoming Veronica Mars movie), who is camped out in the studio right next to LaBeouf's purportedly also arting. He's calling it #IAMSORRYTOO, an obvious spoof of LaBeouf's.

As you can see over at Buzzfeed's Louis Peitzman's account of his experience in O'Connell's exhibition, O'Connell has armed himself with a paper bag reading "SUPER FAMOUS." Also a Stand By Me Blu-Ray. According to them, this will all be part of an upcoming Funny or Die bit featuring O'Connell.

What a time to be alive.

Image: Twitter