Phaidon Press: American artist Elizabeth Peyton has been credited with infusing the ancient art of portraiture with a new life. Her idealized, highly stylized oil paintings, drawings and watercolours 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 enamoured yet refreshingly economic, informal light wash technique underscores her uniquely delicate, informed hybrid of high and low culture, a statement executed with infectious, seemingly effortless fluidity. This title is 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.
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). From 1995-2001 she was Curator of Drawing at the Museum of Modern Art where she organized the exhibitions 'Drawing Now: Eight Propositions' (2002) and 'Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama' (1998) and projects by such artists as Elizabeth Peyton, Luc Tuymans and Maurizio Cattelan. She was an author of Yayoi Kusama (Phaidon, 2002) and a co-editor of Primary Documents (MIT, 2002). She has written numerous essays on artists including Julie Mehretu, Ugo Rondinone and Mark Manders, and has published articles in such magazines as Frieze, Flash Art and Parkett.Author's residence: New YorkIwona Blazwick (Focus) is Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. As Head of Exhibitions and Display at Tate Modern, London (1997-2001), as Director of Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1986-92) and as an independent curator, she has realized many international exhibitions of contemporary and twentieth-century art and has published texts on numerous artists. From 1993-97 she was Commissioning Editor for Contemporary Art at Phaidon Press.Author's Residence: LondonElizabeth Peyton studied at SVA in the early 1990s and came to prominence with a 1993 exhibition of drawn portraits of nineteenth-century Romantic figures installed in a room at the Chelsea Hotel, which visitors could see after requesting the room key. Peyton has recently had solo shows at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Neugerriemschneider, Berlin, Sadie Coles HQ, London and Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York. Her work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, NY, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Guggenheim, among others. Peyton's photographs will soon be exhibited at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut.Artist's residence: New YorkJohn Giorno is a poet, performance artist and AIDS activist and fundraiser. He met Andy Warhol while working as a stockbroker in the early 1960s and subsequently become a prominent figure of the Factory and the subject of one of Warhol's best-known films, Sleep. In 1968 he created Giorno Poetry Systems as a way of connecting poetry to new audiences through new technology. Through his work, he has long been an advocate of collaboration, counting William Burroughs, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Mapplethorpe among his many associates.Author's Residence: New York
