October 18, 2009 - March 21, 2010
Bonnefantenmuseum
Maastricht
From her earliest portraits of 19th-century heroes to her more recent paintings, featuring friends from the world of music, fashion and literature, Elizabeth Peyton has presented herself as a contemporary 'painter of modern life', in the sense that Charles Baudelaire meant it. Peyton's miniature portraits capture the spirit of the times in an artistic language that unmistakeably reflects late 20th-century urban sensitivity. The museum is presenting the first comprehensive retrospective of Peyton's oeuvre in the Netherlands, mounted by the New Museum in New York, comprising work of the past eighteen years, beginning with a small-scale portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte and going up to one of fashion designer Marc Jacobs. Peyton's intimate portraits often appear unrealistic, compared to the public star status of many of her models. Peyton makes them small – both literally and figuratively – in order to visualize a more genuine beauty. Elizabeth Peyton belongs to a select group of artists who developed a unique mix of realism and conceptualism in their work in the early 1990's, in which Peyton consciously reverted to narrative figurative techniques in contemporary painting. Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton was organized by the New Museum, New York, and has travelled to Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue.
