Elizabeth Peyton, Matthew, 2008, oil on board, 12 1/2 x 9".
Curated by Laura Hoptman
What becomes a legend most? In the 1970s, Lillian Helman clad in a Blackglama mink did the trick. Nowadays, the grandest compliment that fine art pays to glamour and celebrity might be Elizabeth Peyton’s portraits. In a rather different but perhaps no less resonant way, Peyton is as much a signature artist of the ’90s as Matthew Barney, the subject of a recent Peyton portrait—and, given her proclivity for skinny, languorous, seemingly lipstick-besmirched ephebi, an uncharacteristic one. Bringing together more than one hundred works, the New Museum surveys fifteen years of the artist’s career. The catalogue includes essays by curator Laura Hoptman, Iwona Blazwick, and poet and superearly Warhol icon John Giorno.
