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Elizabeth Peyton, Georgia (After Stieglitz,
1918), 2006. Direct gravure etching with aquatint on Hahnemuhle Copperplate
Etching paper, 30 x 22”. Edition of 40. Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum,
Washington University in St. Louis. University purchase, Bixby Fund, 2009.
High-res version available upon
request.
One of the most celebrated American
painters of her generation, Elizabeth Peyton is among today’s foremost
contemporary figurative artists and a renowned chronicler of modern life. Her
subjects include personal friends and heroes as well as visual artists such as
Georgia O’Keeffe, David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe, and
historical and cultural figures ranging from William Shakespeare and Richard
Wagner to Eminem and Chloe
Sevigny.
In January, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will
present Ghost: Elizabeth Peyton, the most extensive critical survey of
Peyton’s work as a printmaker to date. Organized by Sabine Eckmann, PhD,
the museum’s William T. Kemper Director and Chief Curator, the exhibition
will include more than four dozen works produced between 1998 and 2010, ranging
from etchings and aquatints to lithographs, monotypes and hand-printed Ukiyo-e
woodcuts. (Since 2002, all of Peyton’s prints have been produced in
collaboration with Two Palms Press, an independent print studio in New York
City.)
As a printmaker, Peyton revives the
tradition of the ‘painterly print’ or monotype — famously
utilized by artists such as Edgar Degas — yet also adapts it and other
techniques to her own contemporary practice. Like her paintings, Peyton’s
prints merge the subjective beauty and individuality of her subjects with the
formal characteristics and exquisite expressive potentials of her chosen medium.
For example, though Peyton’s monotypes, lithographs and woodcuts
frequently reproduce the lush and richly textured qualities of the painted
brushstroke, her etchings are largely characterized by the delicate, refined
contours of the masterfully drawn line. Indeed, it is typical for Peyton’s
prints to emphasize — through form, process and brushwork — the hand
of the artist at
work.
Peyton’s most recent prints, such
as the still life Flowers and Actaeon, January 2009 (2009), are among
her most painterly and find the artist increasingly shifting between figuration
and abstraction. At the same time, Peyton pays homage to a number of historical
figures, including the painter Paul Cézanne; German composer Richard Wagner;
heldentenor Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld; and Schnorr’s wife, Malvina, a
soprano. She also references works by French sculptor Camille Claudel, notably
Claudel's 1905 group sculpture Vertumnus and Pomona, as well as a mask
of Claudel’s face created by her lover and friend Auguste Rodin. These
prints, like Peyton’s very earliest, balance a series of dichotomies
— high art and popular culture; stylization and subjectivity; realism and
fiction; beauty and visual pleasure — while capturing the viewer’s
imagination through dramatic brushwork, intense color and richly modulated
surfaces.
Concurrent with its exhibition at the
Kemper Art Museum, Ghost: Elizabeth Peyton also will be presented at
the Opelvillen in Rüsselsheim, Germany.
That iteration will be curated by director Beate
Kemfert.
Monograph
The exhibition will be accompanied by a
monograph, Ghost: Elizabeth Peyton, jointly published by Hatje
Cantz, the Opelvillen and the Kemper Art Museum. An in-depth exploration of
Peyton as a critical printmaker, the volume includes an essay by Eckmann as well
as contributions by the writer and critic Hilton Als and by David Lasry,
director of Two Palms Press. In addition, the monograph — which is
designed by Joseph Logan — features an interview with Peyton conducted by
Kemfert and more than 70 of Peyton’s prints in
color.
About the
artist
Born in 1965 in Danbury, Conn., Peyton
earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1987 from the School of Visual Arts in
New York. In the years since, her works have been featured in more than 50 solo
exhibitions and dozens of group shows. They are included in major public
collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum of
Contemporary Art, both in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; the Saint
Louis Art Museum; the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; the Kunstmuseum in
Wolfsburg, Germany; and the Museum fur Gegenwartskunst in Basel, Switzerland.
She lives and works in New
York.
Mildred Lane Kemper Art
Museum
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, part
of Washington University's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, is
committed to furthering critical thinking and visual literacy through a vital
program of exhibitions, publications and accompanying events. The museum dates
back to 1881, making it the oldest art museum west of the Mississippi River.
Today it boasts one of the finest university collections in the United
States.
Supporters
Support for Ghost: Elizabeth
Peyton is provided by James M. Kemper, Jr.; the David Woods Kemper Memorial
Foundation; the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; and members of the
Mildred Lane Kemper Art
Museum.
Ghost: Elizabeth Peyton will open
with a reception for the artist from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 28, and remain on
view through April 18, 2011. In addition, the Kemper Art Museum will host an
artist dialogue with Peyton and Eckmann at 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 29, in
Steinberg Hall
Auditorium.
Both the reception and dialogue are
free and open to the public. The Kemper Art Museum is located on Washington
University’s Danforth Campus, immediately adjacent to Steinberg Hall, near
the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. Regular hours are 11 a.m. to
6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays; and 11 a.m.
to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The Museum is closed
Tuesdays.
For more information, call (314)
935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.
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CALENDAR
SUMMARY
WHO: Mildred Lane Kemper Art
Museum
WHAT: Exhibition, Ghost:
Elizabeth
Peyton
WHEN: Jan. 28 to April 18, 2011.
Opening reception from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 28. Artists' dialogue with
Peyton and Sabine Eckmann at 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan.
29.
WHERE: Mildred Lane Kemper Art
Museum, Washington University, near the intersection of Forsyth and Skinker
boulevards. The artists' dialogue will take place in Steinberg Hall Auditorium,
located immediately adjacent to the
museum.
HOURS: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday,
Wednesday and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday
and Sunday. Closed
Tuesdays.
COST: Free and open to the
public.
INFORMATION: (314) 935-4523 or
kemperartmuseum@wustl.edu
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Editor's note:
High-resolution images are available upon
request.
URL: http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/21694.aspx
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