Keith (From Gimme Shelter), 2004. Oil on board, 10 x 12 inches (25.4 x 30.5 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,Purchased with funds contributed by the International Director's Council and Executive Committee Members: Ruth Baum, Edythe Broad, Elaine Terner Cooper, Dimitris Daskalopoulos, Harry David, Gail May Engelberg, Shirley Fiterman, Nicki Harris, Dakis Joannou, Rachel Lehmann, Linda Macklowe, Peter Norton, Tonino Perna, Elizabeth Richebourg Rea, Mortimer D.A. Sackler, Simonetta Seragnoli, David Teiger, Ginny Williams, and Elliot K. Wolk, and Sustaining Members: Tiqui Atencio, Linda Fischbach, Beatrice Habermann, and Cargill and Donna MacMillan  2005.13. © Elizabeth Peyton

Elizabeth Peyton emerged in the 1990s at the forefront of a group of young artists seeking to revive figurative painting—an art form oft-perceived as outdated or irrelevant in an era of expanding media and broadening notions of what constitutes art. Peyton's sensitive portraits of friends, lovers, poets, and rock stars reaffirm the unique capabilities of painting. Although she usually works from preexisting photographs—images in books and magazines, video stills, or her own snapshots—Peyton transforms her source material through fluid brushwork and a bright palette. Her mostly male subjects are imbued with an ethereal, androgynous beauty, replete with flowing hair, pale skin, and ruby lips, as in this portrait of Keith Richards (lifted from a frame of the 1970 film Gimme Shelter). Whether rendering individuals whom she knows personally or historical personalities and contemporary celebrities known only through the filter of the media, Peyton captures her subjects in small, intimate compositions and with a tactile, handcrafted presence that conveys immediacy. Her paintings are earnest acts of love—unabashedly romantic expressions for our ironic, postmodern age.

Ted Mann