Elizabeth Peyton’s Small, Intimate Portraits Ignite Big, Polarizing Reactions

“Why she has her own show I have no idea,” grumbles a New Museum visitor as he scrambles out of the gallery, another victim of the ever-curious Peyton effect.

Since her meteoric rise in the art world about a decade ago, Elizabeth Peyton has been arousing similar reactions in many viewers. Her work is either greeted with much admiration or what can almost be called hatred. The show at the New Museum, “Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton,” is the first ever retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States.

The Peyton effect is an especially curious phenomenon considering that Peyton is not an artist seeking to make any grand artistic pronouncements—with her, what you see is usually what you get.

Initially, the most striking element of Peyton’s work is the inordinately small size of many of her canvases, indicative of the intimacy toward which her work often strives. Her paintings, mainly portraits, are done in a seemingly rough impressionistic style—and it is this so-called “impressionistic sincerity” that is the mainstay of her work. But Peyton also thrives as a colorist. Her intense vibrant juxtaposition of colors along with her seemingly spur-of-the-moment brush strokes combine to make exceedingly heady paintings.

Peyton’s choice of material is equally telling. In one drawing, Savoy (Tony), she chooses to draw a picture of a sleeping male figure on hotel stationary. The impression is that of spontaneous inspiration, as though Peyton grabbed the first surface in sight on which to record the fleeting moment. Yet this interpretation alone would be naïve, for there is a clear and masterful underhanded intent in the use of a hotel stationary. The piece also incorporates the conventions of advertising, which seek to make visual links between commercial symbols, a persona, and a certain lifestyle.

It is easy to see why someone might become a Peyton convert. Two girls visiting the exhibition perfectly summed it up: “She’s so sincere,” said one. “Yeah, she brings the same level of attention to a painting of a photograph or a painting of her friends,” the other replied. “She finds the beauty in everything.”

The idea that “everything is beautiful”—which runs through Peyton’s work—entices many, but repels others. This kind of belief reveals a lack of questioning and might ultimately threaten to become a kind of blind manic fandom.

As it stands, though, Peyton’s subjects are indeed very beautiful—they often possess gazes that seem to burn with an intoxicating intensity. This gaze is most active in Nick (Chateau Momont, Los Angeles, September 2002), one of her later paintings, which appears to have a stronger psychological depth than some of her earlier work. Hopefully it is a sign of things to come.