Product Description

American artist Elizabeth Peyton has been credited with breathing new life into the ancient art of portraiture. Her highly stylized, idealized oil paintings, drawings, and watercolors are driven by the emotional, adoring eye of an unrequited lover. Willowy, melancholy young men and women contemporary pop stars, royalty, artists, and friends are the magnetic subjects of her devotion. Caught as if in a state of ambiguous absorption and frozen at the height of their youth, they embody a new kind of portraiture that confirms and updates the immortalizing aura of the traditional genre.



Peyton's melding of influences and obsessions ranges widely: from fandom and fashion illustration to academic anatomical studies; from David Hockney and Andy Warhol to a range of Mannerist and Old Master classics; from innocence to the world of bohemia, equally crediting photography and life drawing as its driving forces. Her enamored yet refreshingly informal light wash technique underscores her uniquely delicate, informed hybrid of high and low culture, a statement executed with infectious, seemingly effortless fluidity.



Published in conjunction with the artist's major solo exhibition at the New Museum in New York, which will travel to the Whitechapel in London, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #131554 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

About the Author
Laura Hoptman is Kraus Family Senior Curator at the New Museum, where, in addition to curating 'Elizabeth Peyton,' she co-curated the exhibition 'Unmonumental' (2007). Previously she was the Curator of Contemporary Art at Carnegie Museum of Contemporary Art, where she organized the 54th Carnegie International (2004-05).



Iwona Blazwick is Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. As Head of Exhibitions and Display at Tate Modern, London (1997-2001), and as an independent curator, she has realized many international exhibitions of contemporary and twentieth-century art and has published texts on numerous artists.



John Giorno is a poet, performance artist, and AIDS activist. He met Andy Warhol while working as a stockbroker in the early 1960s and subsequently became a prominent figure of the Factory and the subject of one of Warhol s best-known films, Sleep. Through his work, he has long been an advocate of collaboration, counting William Burroughs, Patti Smith, Philip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg, and Robert Mapplethorpe among his many associates.

Customer Reviews

A conceptualist? Really?
The catalogue for the current Elizabeth Peyton mid-career show at the New Museum in NYC, this book's main asset is the quality of the reproductions. From the first paintings in the early nineties (of friends, rockers and English royalties) to the latest portraits of celebrities (her dealer Gavin Brown, Matthew Barney...)the illustrated works give a fair idea of the artist's evolution, qualities as a colorist and swift brushstrokes, to which one must now add an ability to capture the mood of her model, a quality that, I think, she did not possess in her early works. However, nothing being perfect in this world, the accompanying text, which tries to portray Elizabeth Peyton as a "conceptualist" (through her relationship with her ex-husband, the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, and the supposedly shared recurring themes between the two of love and community), is somewhat far-fetched, if not pompous (thence the four stars instead of five...).

a beautiful book.
Recently I viewed Elizabeth Peyton's solo show in NYC and was completely blown away! did not expect the vibrancy of her palette to pop off the canvas as it had as well as her expressive manner of painting to evoke the complexities and the subtle beauty that I experienced that day at her show. So I was completely inspired to purchase her book.
The book is a reminder for me of the show in NY so I absolutely love it. The only caveat is that the printed pages can never quite replicate the actual paintings themselves but it's still a fantastic and comprehensive catalog of her work that I am quite thrilled to incorporate in my library of art books.

With Authority
Peyton's brushwork and authority are impressive, not to mention the strong intelligent character of the images. Something to strive for.

Re the book itself, very high quality reproductions and a unique binding making it easy to keep the pages open.