FEATURES ARCHIVE

When One Art Form Salutes Another
Delving into the backgrounds and influences of three important contemporary artists, we find references to numerous art forms as sources of inspiration. Overlapping influences from science, photography, film, music, fashion and popular culture have changed the face of art as we know it. From photographs of thunderstorms to members of the Euopean monarchy, we find out below what makes these artists tick.

“Reading about Napoleon made me think how people make history. They are the way the world moves, and they contain their time. It shows in their faces. I’d always made pictures of people, even when I was a little, little person. The urge was there – I just didn’t know why. When I did that first drawing of Napoleon, I realized this is something I have to do and want to do.” - Elizabeth Peyton, 2008

Cult Fiction
Known for her portraits of lithe, modern, stylisted figures, Elizabeth Peyton has painted a vast range of subjects from popular celebrities such as John Lennon, to members of the European monarchy, her favourites being Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Harry. In this dark charcoal image she depicts the French actor, Jean Pierre Leaud, as Antoine Doinel, a recurring fictional character and alter ego for the famous film maker, Francois Truffaut’s film, The 400 Blows. Over the next twenty years Leaud continued to play the role of Doinel in four more semi-biographical films loosely based on Truffaut’s life. As Peyton once said, she couldn’t paint just anyone. She is drawn to certain individuals for whom she holds some degree of admiration, and always paints them with a certain youth, pallor and weightlessness giving a strongly identifiable common thread to her work.

Struck by Lightning
Jack Goldstein began his career in the 1980s experimenting with film, performance art and conceptual art. Once he had built his reputation in New York as an avant-garde film maker, Goldstein started painting, drawing inspiration from photographs of natural phenomena and rare scientific occurrences. Often using nothing more than acrylic paints he mastered the art of rendering the most impressive images of natural phenomena which command the complete attention of the onlooker, making one look twice with amazement at these almost photographic visions. This is an iconic example of his oeuvre, in which lightning is a striking theme. The painting culminates in one ‘spectacular instant’, an explosion of colour, a sight that can only be captured in one ephemeral moment.

Smoke and Mirrors
Like Peyton, Douglas Gordon’s work has also been strongly influenced by other art forms, namely film and music. His works often play with opposing dualities such as life and death, good and evil, artist and viewer. In a series of works entitled Self -Portrait of You + Me, he skillfully merges portraits of famous celebrities with pieces of mirror, resulting in works that are quite haunting and ghostly from a distance. However, upon approaching the works to come face to face with the celebrity in question, your own features are reflected in the mirrored gaps resulting in a composite (self-) portrait. By calling it a self-portrait, Gordon is giving the viewer an element of ownership and responsibility for the outcome of the artwork. By looking at such a piece you momentarily complete the composition. This may be involuntary but you are nonetheless a participant in the creation of that artwork at that given moment. To experience the work in full effect, come and view it in person at Christie’s King Street galleries from 14 – 16 October.