Elizabeth Peyton Live Forever

American artist Elizabeth Peyton has been credited with breathing new life into the ancient art of portraiture. Her highly stylized, idealized oil paintings, drawings, and watercolors are driven by the emotional, adoring eye of an unrequited lover.

Elizabeth Peyton paints portraits of people who matter to her. Be they the iconic faces of Princess Diana, Andy Warhol, Liam Gallagher, and Leonardo DiCaprio or the unfamiliar visages of her friends, lovers, and acquaintances, all appear delicate and painterly, glossy and jewel-like, small in format, and distinctly intimate--as if Peyton knew and loved them all equally. Titles, which reveal only the models' first names, likewise suggest a closeness between the artist and her subject. Working with public photographs borrowed from books and pop magazines, and private photographs shot by herself, the media experience and mediated personality is questioned, transformed, and absorbed into her personal world via the process of painting. Her subjects, fragily beautiful and forever young, are glossed over with a melancholy that recognizes the high price paid for eternal youth.

Texts by Laura Hoptman, Akira Tatehata, Lynn Zelevansky

Essays by Gary Garrels, Laura Hoptman, Midori Matsui, Cuauhtemoc Medina, Francesco Bonami, Elizabeth Smith, Jean-Pierre Mercier, Branka Stipancic, and Elizabeth Thomas. Foreword by Richard Armstrong.

Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century is a groundbreaking thematic survey of sculptural work by thirty of today's leading artists.

Publisher description

Peyton’s new work unveils a holy world of cultural luminaries Elizabeth Peyton’s art is one of glances and gestures that become indistinguishable from her in the moment she paints them. The works are an expression of specificity, but also of Peyton’s extraordinary ability to identify with her subjects.There is a feeling that becomes cumulative in her art, unadulterated and almost destabilizing, built up through the many brush marks that characterize her surfaces. Through the depth of these images, constructed one stroke at a time, the emotional substrate of our reality is revealed. —Lucas Zwirner, “The Profession of the Painter,” in Angel Angel, Peyton’s debut monograph from David Zwirner Books, explores the artist’s extraordinary ability to identify with her subject matter, from Ang in the Mountains and Mani Rimdu to the subjects of Elvis Angel (Elvis' Eyes) and Titanic (Jack & Rose). These are paintings that dwell in the permeability of light and space, reveling in what Petyon calls “painting and art as a space to capture energy that can take you someplace else.” Published on the occasion of her exhibition Angel at David Zwirner London in 2023, this volume includes full color plates of eighteen new works, Peyton’s own photographs connected by “the feeling of love, faith, and nature moving through all of them,” and a text by Lucas Zwirner.

Live Forever is the first collection of Elizabeth Peyton's acclaimed drawings, paintings and photography. The book contains portraits of pop stars, historical figures, and friends of the artist. Many of Peyton's pictures are derived from photographs and magazines, though they exhibit a painterly quality which belies their sources. The book's small scale suits perfectly Peyton's intimate approach to portraiture, and brings out the sensual strength of her artistry.