Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise.
“It’s a challenge to embrace Wagner as a human being, not as hard to embrace him as an artist,” says Elizabeth Peyton, whose new solo exhibition of works inspired by the composer’s Ring cycle opens in Gallery Met on February 24. “He was awful in so many ways but had such epic creativity. To make a narrative so transcendent is a gigantic feat, and the music is mind-blowing.” Peyton’s exhibition, simply titled Wagner, is the second in a series of four Ring-inspired shows planned for Gallery Met this season and next. The exhibitions coincide with Robert Lepage’s new Ring production, which began with Das Rheingold and continues on April 22 with Die Walküre. “I chose Elizabeth for this project because she’s not only one of the strongest artists of her generation, but she has an uncanny ability to say something new about historical figures through her portraits,” says Gallery Met director Dodie Kazanjian. “It seemed like the Ring might open another door to her imaginative thinking.” Known for her small but vibrant portraits of such figures as Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Prince William, and Michelle Obama, among others, Peyton was a newcomer to opera when she was approached to create work for the Met. But an immersion in Wagner recordings helped her realize the new pieces. “I listened to the Ring a lot while I was making the pictures for the show, along with Tristan und Isolde and Tannhäuser —I was listening to the new Kanye West record a bit too,” says the artist, whose work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. “There is a sound of human emotions that Wagner captures that is so heartbreaking. I was thinking about that a lot, about the power of being able to express those kinds of feelings in art.” —Matt Dobkin
Wagner is on display in Gallery Met,
in the Met’s south lobby, through the end of
the season.
This article was first published online in January 2011 and in the Met's Playbill in February 2011.
