CITY Issue 59

CITY LIFE / TEMPORARY CONTEMPORARY BY BILL POWERS Elizabeth Peyton’s retrospective at The New Museum, “Live Forever,” is sure to be an oasis for portrait lovers. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY T Wa hol is an admitted inﬂuence on Peyton ,and she once made a painting of his shoes based on a Richa d vedon photog aph. Unlike Wa hol, howeve , she neve sent subo dinates into the ﬁeld sea ching fo “po t ait victims,” as Wa hol pe iodically dispatched F ed Hughes and Bob Collacello to high-p oﬁ le events. Peyton esisted the moneymaking u ge to moonlight as a b ush-fo -hi e (I think the polite te m is commissions). The pu ity of he wo k, its integ ity, emained constant, which in itself became a kind of Chinese ﬁ nge t ap. s the new millennium came and went, the novelty of Peyton’s app oach wo e thin, and paintings like nde wea ing his signatu e bowtie sta ted to stale — that is until this past sp ing, when she unveiled a new se ies of po t aits at Gavin’s on G eenwich St eet in New o k. That magic-hou glaze of he s had all but disappea ed, those omantic gazes faded into emission. He e was Matthew Ba ney, sullen and pock-ma ked, sta ing glumly at us. He e was Elizabeth Peyton’s gi lf iend, pictu ed in all he human f ailty. I should say that I am not f iends he exhibition title is borrowed from a Gallaghe b othe s’ song of the same name, the thi d single oﬀ of Oasis’s debut album, Deﬁnitel Ma be. It was the summe of , the summe we lost Ni vana’s Ku t Cobain to suicide, when Elizabeth Peyton began to p oduce the wo k that would culminate in he b eakout show the following yea at Gavin B own’s Ente p ise. lthough we sometimes ove look timelines in contempo a y a t — hen people paint something can be just as impo tant as hat they captu e on canvas. ndy Wa hol, fo instance, began his seial po t aits of Ma ilyn Mon oe on ugust , , also known as the day Mon oe was found dead of a d ug ove dose. Peyton o en ende ed he he oes in eal time, and the public loved he fo it. s the ’ s p og essed, she became famous fo making and ogy48 CITY TY ELIZABETH PEYTON'S "LIVE FOREVER" EXHIBITION WILL BE ON DISPLAY AT THE NEW MUSEUM IN NEW YORK FROM OCTOBER 8 TO JANUARY 11. nous po t aits of ock sta s such as Ja vis Cocke , Julian Casablancas and the Libe tines, oyalty like ueen Elizabeth and the Beckhams, as well as paintings of f iends and love s asleep o othe wise eclined. She seemingly painted any ﬁ gu e able to spa k he admi ation, and in doing so developed an audience app eciative of an a tist willing to t eat histo ical subjects and studio assistants on equally idealized footing. I always thought she made eve yone look a little bit alike — and a little bit like he — in the same way that Wa hol’s silksc een techniques got so familia , and the pieces themselves so ubiquitous, that the sitte ’s featu es became almost te tia y. with Elizabeth Peyton, though we do sha e a few f iends, and f om what I can su mise has been a time of g eat upheaval in he pe sonal life. Peyton b oke off with he longtime boyf iend, Tony Just, and began dating a lawye whom I’m told specializes in t acking down a two k stolen by the Nazis. She changed households, too, seeking p ivacy f om the Wyste ia Lane whe e she fo me ly esided on the No th Fo k of Long Island. Who knows what these lifestyle changes say about the a tist, but in the wo ds of Noel Gallaghe , maybe now’s the time to find out why? Sta ting Octobe you can decide fo you self. PETE, INK ON PAPER, 2005, PHOTO BY DANA LOIA

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CITY Issue 59

CITY Issue 59 Contents Have You Heard? Our Friends Action Wanted City Moment Diary Temporary Contemporary In Rogue The Amused Bouche Fast Food Tara Subkoff Alvarourbano Hardy Blachman Javier Peres Cult Classic Dream Jewels London Calling Argentina Good Airs Mission from God Your Place, and Mine One City, Many Destinations I'm Good, I'm Gone. 7 Hour Overdrive Where to Buy It Cityscape

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.