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We
recently wrote about the New Museum - and now seems to be the
perfect opportunity to go down to the Bowery and take in the
gallery of portraits in Elizabeth Peyton's Live Forever - a
collection of well over a hundred paintings including faces drawn
from history, popular culture, and the artist's own circle of
friends.
The
art of the portrait - as old as mankind - faces on ancient
frescoes, lines scratched on the sand, eternal and
ephemeral. The search for immortality and the very human
desire to see ourselves, to capture history and time. A
mirror of sorts; it's human nature to want to draw and paint the
human face, to try to reach in and grasp some indefinable
spirit. The genre of portrait-painting became highly
developed some time between the late middle ages and the
seventeenth century. The individual came into focus and it
also became a way of controlling one's image for the noblemen and
merchants who commissioned such paintings. Portrait types
became developed - full-length, profile, three-quarter view . . .
. The notion of the difference between verisimilitude and an
idealized image was explored and the idea of bringing out the
character and the inner qualities or the essence of the sitter was
developed. Elizabeth Peyton continues this art form that has
so engaged the popular consciousness from Leonardo da Vinci's Mona
Lisa and Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring through
modern times in the work of Andy Warhol and Chuck Close.
Peyton's
first show at the Chelsea Hotel in 1993 had paintings of Napoleon,
Marie, Antoinette, and Queen Elizabeth and she has in essence
remained a portraitist. Peyton's paintings have rich,
jeweled colors, elements of the miniature, a certain raffish
raggedness. The show at the New Museum includes portraits of
celebrities, friends, historical figures, and moves from lissome
pretty boys to a Matthew Barney with baggy circles under
eyes. They are generally close-ups, executed with a fine
light hand, the colors saturated. A contemporary take on an
ancient art - face to face with eternity!
Visit:
Live
Forever, Elizabeth Peyton
Visit:
The
National Portrait Gallery
Tags:
art
museums
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