Elizabeth Peyton: Democrats Are More

Elizabeth Peyton: Democrats Are More Beautiful

In a culture focused on reality everything, it is not surprising that Elizabeth Peyton's work has achieved great fame. Peyton, like the rest of us, must pay the bills, and she has capitalized on what might now be called reality portraiture. Peyton has painted celebrities from the Beatles, to Kurt Cobain, to Britain's Princes William and Harry, immortalizing the full breadth of famous faces in contemporary culture.

Peyton, however, breathes the artists' interpretation into the life of her paintings. She says that they are more than just the reflection of the famous person, but how she feels about the person, how, from her artist's perspective they transcend the celebrity within which they move (New Museum.org, Live Forever, 2009, found online). In other words, Peyton, like the rest of us, although she moves in circles of celebrity, sees famous faces not just as faces which she paints. She is painting the emotional experience she has from their celebrity; the ultimate reality of interpreting fame and pop culture through art.

It is much too easy perhaps to analyze the celebrity painting. Therefore, for this brief analysis on the work of Peyton, the focus is on her Peyton: what can we learn about the feelings and thinking of Peyton from her work titled Democrats are More Beautiful (After Jonathan Horowitz) (Oil on board, 10x8, New Museum.org, Live Forever, found online).

When Peyton says that the images, pictures, she paints are more than just a picture, we see that in the Democrats are More Beautiful painting. Certainly the title of the painting gives us a clue as to Peyton's political affiliation (she painted Michelle Obama with her daughter at the inauguration). But we also see that the painting expresses Peyton's own hope for the future, a more beautiful future, and perhaps one not marred by darkness of war and chaos.

The painting is oil, a clean and pure medium, which allows the artist to convey the angelic light of the subject. The colors are bright, clear, not marred by the political past, and the deep blueness of the subject's eyes convey the purity, innocence, and religiosity of the hope that the artist expresses in her political statement in this portrait. "They are not just faces," Peyton, has said of her portraits, referring to the old classical painters of portraiture, indicating that she too has studied those classics well, and while she is not attempting to recreate that process of capturing images to make people well-known, she does believe in this culture portraiture is a means to convey her ideas about the world around her (New Museum.org, audio interview, found online).