Over the weekend I finally checked out “Live Forever,” Elizabeth Peyton’s solo show at the New Museum.
The exhibition is a lot like the documentary with which it shares its name — a yearbook of Cool Britannia culture.
(Random: The movie is my all-time favorite … at one point I could recite the whole thing.)
Walking through the exhibition, with all its dreamy little portraits of good-looking rock stars and art stars, I couldn’t help but wonder about Elizabeth Peyton. The exhibition essay says: “Together, her works capture an artistic zeitgeist that reflects the cultural climate of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries.” That’s not the vibe I got though.
If you follow the exhibition chronologically, you end up at a painting of Michelle Obama, installed the day after the election.
Michelle and Sasha Obama, 2008
It’s then that it hits you; you realize that — with just a few exceptions — every portrait you’ve seen has been of a young, white man.
Now I have no problem with a woman painting portraits of beautiful men. In fact, I’m all for it. If these paintings were a record of her conquests, I’d be a little jealous, but leave feeling totally empowered. Yet Peyton treats her subjects with such a tender, childlike manner that it’s easy to image her saying: “Hey guys, I’ll paint your picture if you let me hang out with you.”
Jarvis, 1996
Simply put, Peyton’s Live Forever is a lot more Tigerbeat than Playgirl. And that’s the problem.
Oasis, for your time.
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