Art & Creativity Quote by Richard Schickel

Schickel’s line lands like a cold splash on the face of celebrity culture: the movie star isn’t the maker, he’s the made. Calling a star an “art object” shifts attention from craft to curation, from agency to display. It’s not just a diss aimed at actors; it’s a diagnosis of an industry that turns humans into commodities designed to be looked at, interpreted, and sold.

The phrasing matters. “Artist” implies control over materials and meaning. “Art object” implies the opposite: something lit, framed, and circulated for consumption. Stars may act, train, even produce, but Schickel is pointing at the larger machinery that decides what their face means in public. A star’s “performance” isn’t confined to the screen; it’s the interviews, the scandals, the wardrobe, the carefully managed spontaneity. The person becomes a surface onto which audiences project fantasies and studios project marketing strategy.

The subtext is cynical but precise: fame is less about expression than about legibility. Hollywood needs types you can recognize instantly; the star system rewards consistency of image more than risk. Even when a star breaks character, the break is quickly absorbed as new branding.

Schickel, writing as a critic in the late-20th-century media ecosystem, understood how film criticism had to grapple with not only movies but the celebrity apparatus surrounding them. The quote anticipates today’s influencer economy, where the product is still a human being, polished into a portable symbol, endlessly reproducible, and rarely allowed the messy freedom we associate with art.