Elizabeth Peyton

I read the Melody Maker like Marcel Proust, says Elizabeth Peyton (b. Danbury, CT, 1965; lives and works in New York and Berlin). She first attracted attention in the mid-1990s with stylized and idealized portraits of her friends, pop stars, and members of European royal houses. These characters, androgynous figures rife with sexual ambivalence, appear in small-format pictures executed in various techniques: oil on canvas, watercolor or pencil drawing on paper, etching. Peyton s sources are photographs she either takes herself or sources from the yellow press, and so her art is inspired by the studio portraits of well-known photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Robert Mapplethorpe. The painter she says she admires most is David Hockney; many critics also see the influence of Andy Warhol, who often portrayed celebrities. Elizabeth Peyton has captured the faces of an entire generation (of artists) in pictures that show a very personal touch. The book presents highlights of her portraiture created between 1994 and 2014: David Hockney, Kurt Cobain, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jude Law, Jake Chapman, Lady Di, and others. With essays by Laura Hoptman and Boris Pofalla