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拍品專文
After that awards show, I made a painting of you getting out of jail because I thought what you did was so heroic.
Elizabeth Peyton (E. Peyton quoted in J. Cocker, “Elizabeth Peyton”, Interview, November 28 2008).
Elizabeth Peyton’s astute painting Jarvis after Jail captures the fallout from one of the most infamous events in British Pop music history. In 1996, during a performance of Earthsong by Michael Jackson, Jarvis Cocker—the lead singer of the English rock band Pulp—rushed the stage to protest Jackson’s depiction of himself as a Christ-like figure with the apparent power of healing. Following the incident, Cocker was detained by the police and questioned on suspicion of assault, but was later released without charge. Peyton’s source image for the present work comes from a press photo taken after Cocker’s release and published on the front page of Melody Maker music magazine.
Broadcast around the world, the incident caused a media frenzy, with many—including politicians and the tabloid press—decrying Cocker’s actions as setting a bad example for the audience of children and young people watching. Peyton, on the other hand, saw things differently. “I’m interested in making pictures of artists whose work inspires me,” Peyton once said (E. Peyton quoted in C. Roux “Elizabeth Peyton: The Exceptional Portrait Painter”, The Gentlewoman, no. 8 Autumn & Winter 2013). In an interview with Cocker in 2008, she told him that she decided to paint him after his act of protest at the Brit Awards. “There aren’t many people who stand up, whether it be in culture or politics, and say: “Listen, this is dumb. It doesn’t have to be like this.” After that awards show, I made a painting of you getting out of jail because I thought what you did was so heroic.” (E. Peyton quoted in J. Cocker, “Elizabeth Peyton”, Interview, November 28 2008).
The disheveled figure of Cocker is deftly manifested out of Peyton’s fluid brushwork. The musician’s famous tousled hair and iconic thick-rimmed glasses are the result of ample, confident strokes from a fully loaded brush, while Peyton precisely captures the texture of Cocker’s embroidered jacket as it merges with the upholstered interior of the London taxi as he’s driven away to avoid the attention of waiting paparazzi. Enhancing the sense of drama, Peyton adds pops of color to the interior gloom of the taxi, highlighting his cherry-red lips and the illuminated end of the lit cigarette with pops of bright red that match the colorful grab handles located near the doors of the taxi. Peyton works spontaneously, without the need for preparatory sketches or drawings. Her aim is to capture the impulse of the moment or event she is immortalizing. In this sense, this present image of Jarvis Cocker becomes the perfect subject for her unique style. Cocker is on record as saying that his stage “invasion” was completely spontaneous: “I was quite surprised, as suddenly I was there, and once I was there I didn’t really know what to do” (interviewed by Chris Evans on TFI Friday, Channel 4 Television, February 22, 1996, online [accessed: 4/22/2026]). In the present work, Peyton perfectly captures the aftermath of what record company executive Marc Marot called “the perfect moment of rock’n’roll bedlam” (ibid.).
Cocker was by no means the first musician to have fallen foul of a public ideal of perfection and subsequently caught the attention of artists. From Andy Warhol’s immortalization of Elvis Presley and John Lennon at the height of media frenzy to Richard Hamilton’s Swinging London (1968-69), capturing the moment in 1967 when Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones, was released after being arrested for drug possession, the media roller-coaster of Pop icons has provided a rich seam of subject material for artists.
Jarvis after Jail was painted shortly after Peyton’s breakthrough solo show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York. Reviewing that show, The New York Times critic Roberta Smith noted, “Her penchant for indicating his pale skin and bleached hair with stark white lines gives his famous charisma an incandescent glow that seems to be both coming into focus and fading away. In these and other ways, the auras of painting and fame are repeatedly equated” (R. Smith, “Blood and Punk Royalty to Grunge Royalty,” The New York Times, March 24, 1995, p. C30, online [accessed:10/23/2025]). It is precisely due to this beguiling nature that Peyton decided to revisit Cocker in several institutional works, including Jarvis (1998) in the Boros Collection, Berlin; and Jarvis Cocker (1996) in the Seattle Art Museum.
Elizabeth Peyton’s subjects find themselves inhabiting a magical space where many overlapping and divergent worlds coalesce. Like Elvis, Lennon and Mick Jagger, Jarvis Cocker in Jarvis after Jail occupies both a public and private space. In her hands, the 90s-era aesthetic personified by the present work transcends time. Using heightened colors, intense and intimate detail and a votive-like approach to her subjects, Peyton has found a way to be both of her time and mystically of another.
Elizabeth Peyton (E. Peyton quoted in J. Cocker, “Elizabeth Peyton”, Interview, November 28 2008).
Elizabeth Peyton’s astute painting Jarvis after Jail captures the fallout from one of the most infamous events in British Pop music history. In 1996, during a performance of Earthsong by Michael Jackson, Jarvis Cocker—the lead singer of the English rock band Pulp—rushed the stage to protest Jackson’s depiction of himself as a Christ-like figure with the apparent power of healing. Following the incident, Cocker was detained by the police and questioned on suspicion of assault, but was later released without charge. Peyton’s source image for the present work comes from a press photo taken after Cocker’s release and published on the front page of Melody Maker music magazine.
Broadcast around the world, the incident caused a media frenzy, with many—including politicians and the tabloid press—decrying Cocker’s actions as setting a bad example for the audience of children and young people watching. Peyton, on the other hand, saw things differently. “I’m interested in making pictures of artists whose work inspires me,” Peyton once said (E. Peyton quoted in C. Roux “Elizabeth Peyton: The Exceptional Portrait Painter”, The Gentlewoman, no. 8 Autumn & Winter 2013). In an interview with Cocker in 2008, she told him that she decided to paint him after his act of protest at the Brit Awards. “There aren’t many people who stand up, whether it be in culture or politics, and say: “Listen, this is dumb. It doesn’t have to be like this.” After that awards show, I made a painting of you getting out of jail because I thought what you did was so heroic.” (E. Peyton quoted in J. Cocker, “Elizabeth Peyton”, Interview, November 28 2008).
The disheveled figure of Cocker is deftly manifested out of Peyton’s fluid brushwork. The musician’s famous tousled hair and iconic thick-rimmed glasses are the result of ample, confident strokes from a fully loaded brush, while Peyton precisely captures the texture of Cocker’s embroidered jacket as it merges with the upholstered interior of the London taxi as he’s driven away to avoid the attention of waiting paparazzi. Enhancing the sense of drama, Peyton adds pops of color to the interior gloom of the taxi, highlighting his cherry-red lips and the illuminated end of the lit cigarette with pops of bright red that match the colorful grab handles located near the doors of the taxi. Peyton works spontaneously, without the need for preparatory sketches or drawings. Her aim is to capture the impulse of the moment or event she is immortalizing. In this sense, this present image of Jarvis Cocker becomes the perfect subject for her unique style. Cocker is on record as saying that his stage “invasion” was completely spontaneous: “I was quite surprised, as suddenly I was there, and once I was there I didn’t really know what to do” (interviewed by Chris Evans on TFI Friday, Channel 4 Television, February 22, 1996, online [accessed: 4/22/2026]). In the present work, Peyton perfectly captures the aftermath of what record company executive Marc Marot called “the perfect moment of rock’n’roll bedlam” (ibid.).
Cocker was by no means the first musician to have fallen foul of a public ideal of perfection and subsequently caught the attention of artists. From Andy Warhol’s immortalization of Elvis Presley and John Lennon at the height of media frenzy to Richard Hamilton’s Swinging London (1968-69), capturing the moment in 1967 when Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones, was released after being arrested for drug possession, the media roller-coaster of Pop icons has provided a rich seam of subject material for artists.
Jarvis after Jail was painted shortly after Peyton’s breakthrough solo show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York. Reviewing that show, The New York Times critic Roberta Smith noted, “Her penchant for indicating his pale skin and bleached hair with stark white lines gives his famous charisma an incandescent glow that seems to be both coming into focus and fading away. In these and other ways, the auras of painting and fame are repeatedly equated” (R. Smith, “Blood and Punk Royalty to Grunge Royalty,” The New York Times, March 24, 1995, p. C30, online [accessed:10/23/2025]). It is precisely due to this beguiling nature that Peyton decided to revisit Cocker in several institutional works, including Jarvis (1998) in the Boros Collection, Berlin; and Jarvis Cocker (1996) in the Seattle Art Museum.
Elizabeth Peyton’s subjects find themselves inhabiting a magical space where many overlapping and divergent worlds coalesce. Like Elvis, Lennon and Mick Jagger, Jarvis Cocker in Jarvis after Jail occupies both a public and private space. In her hands, the 90s-era aesthetic personified by the present work transcends time. Using heightened colors, intense and intimate detail and a votive-like approach to her subjects, Peyton has found a way to be both of her time and mystically of another.