Monday, May 24, 2010

Elizabeth Peyton...

The paintings of Elizabeth Peyton include
portraits of friends, family, personal heroes,
and fleeting passions.
Peyton quickly became a voice in the return to figurative
contemporary painting in the 1990's with her portraits of
Kurt Cobain and Liam Gallagher. The portraits mixed
realism and conceptualism and referenced nineteenth-century
modernist painters like Eduard Manet and John Singer Sargent
(one of my all-time favorites). David Hockney and Andy Warhol
are also obvious strong influences.
The colors are often brilliant and the lines sharp —
but there is always something quietly seductive
about her paintings.
In other words, they almost always
"speak" to the viewer.
Gorgeous, gorgeous color.
The graphic quality of her work always speaks to the
aesthetics of youth, fame, and creativity and defines
the culture of the late-twentieth and
early-twenty-first centuries.

3 comments:

  1. amazing work, really love her style. thanks for showing it, loved it.

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  2. Thank you James for this vignette about one of our most prominent and successful North American modern artists!

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