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Lot Essay
‘Making art is making something live forever. Human beings especially – we can’t hold on to them in any way. Painting and art is a way of holding onto things and making things go on through time’
ELIZABETH PEYTON
‘I think little things are more powerful because they’re more honest, so people feel them more strongly’
ELIZABETH PEYTON
‘The only line that’s wrong in William Shakespeare is “holding a mirror up to nature.” You hold a magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor, you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with the situation. If it were a mirror, we would have no art’
MONTGOMERY CLIFT
Montgomery Clift 1957 (Raintree County) (1995) is a beautiful example of Elizabeth Peyton’s signature style: an intimate and subtly powerful portrait, presenting the artist’s wistful fascination with male beauty and the elusive essence of stardom. The titular Montgomery Clift sits on the ground wearing a blue suit and brown shoes, smoking. Left leg up with his elbow resting on his knee, he gazes solemnly into the middle distance. The background is neutral and barely sketched, while Clift’s fine features are picked out in delicate detail; shadows are applied in deep sepia tones and his lips are highlighted with a touch of crimson, lending the Hollywood star more than a hint of the nineteenth century aesthete. In this disarmingly simple image, Peyton’s mastery of technique and composition are unmistakable. She applies diluted oil paint to a gesso ground that she has sanded glassy-smooth, creating pellucid washes of rich colour that glide across the surface. With a bare minimum of strokes Clift is made luminously present, and achingly beyond reach.
As a member of the pantheon of pop icons, rockstars, celebrities and friends Peyton depicts in her acclaimed figurative works, Montgomery Clift embodies a distinctive strain of youthful splendour and charisma. Greatly admired by Marlon Brando for his method acting and adored by legions of fans, he, like Brando, was emblematic of rebellious youth culture in 1950s America. For all his good looks and talent, however, he became a tragic figure. Often hounded by an eager press, he led a deliberately private life in New York, and concealed his homosexuality for fear of damaging his career. While filming for the 1957 Civil War melodrama Raintree County, in which he starred alongside Elizabeth Taylor, he drunkenly crashed his car, breaking his nose, shattering his jaw and lacerating his face. He took two months to recover from surgery before returning to complete filming; the damage is clear in some scenes of the movie. Left in constant pain, Clift became increasingly erratic and unemployable as his addiction to drugs spiralled out of control, until his death in 1966, aged 45, from a heart attack. Peyton has chosen a still from Raintree County as her source image. As with her other works based on photographs, she has let the original ‘get lost’ in her painting, dissolving and distilling its specifics to form her own intensely individual vision. Clift sits as if contemplating his fate, caught in a moment of perfection before his life changed forever. Peyton’s brushwork charges the tiny canvas with a monumental energy: she believes that ‘little things are more powerful because they’re more honest, so people feel them more strongly’ (E. Peyton, quoted in J. Cocker, ‘Elizabeth Peyton,’ Interview Magazine, 26 November 2008). For a moment, Clift seems to be out of the public eye, at peace in Peyton’s quiet corner of personal reverie. Immediate, idealistic and timelessly romantic, Montgomery Clift 1957 celebrates youth and beauty even as they fade from the real world.
ELIZABETH PEYTON
‘I think little things are more powerful because they’re more honest, so people feel them more strongly’
ELIZABETH PEYTON
‘The only line that’s wrong in William Shakespeare is “holding a mirror up to nature.” You hold a magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor, you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with the situation. If it were a mirror, we would have no art’
MONTGOMERY CLIFT
Montgomery Clift 1957 (Raintree County) (1995) is a beautiful example of Elizabeth Peyton’s signature style: an intimate and subtly powerful portrait, presenting the artist’s wistful fascination with male beauty and the elusive essence of stardom. The titular Montgomery Clift sits on the ground wearing a blue suit and brown shoes, smoking. Left leg up with his elbow resting on his knee, he gazes solemnly into the middle distance. The background is neutral and barely sketched, while Clift’s fine features are picked out in delicate detail; shadows are applied in deep sepia tones and his lips are highlighted with a touch of crimson, lending the Hollywood star more than a hint of the nineteenth century aesthete. In this disarmingly simple image, Peyton’s mastery of technique and composition are unmistakable. She applies diluted oil paint to a gesso ground that she has sanded glassy-smooth, creating pellucid washes of rich colour that glide across the surface. With a bare minimum of strokes Clift is made luminously present, and achingly beyond reach.
As a member of the pantheon of pop icons, rockstars, celebrities and friends Peyton depicts in her acclaimed figurative works, Montgomery Clift embodies a distinctive strain of youthful splendour and charisma. Greatly admired by Marlon Brando for his method acting and adored by legions of fans, he, like Brando, was emblematic of rebellious youth culture in 1950s America. For all his good looks and talent, however, he became a tragic figure. Often hounded by an eager press, he led a deliberately private life in New York, and concealed his homosexuality for fear of damaging his career. While filming for the 1957 Civil War melodrama Raintree County, in which he starred alongside Elizabeth Taylor, he drunkenly crashed his car, breaking his nose, shattering his jaw and lacerating his face. He took two months to recover from surgery before returning to complete filming; the damage is clear in some scenes of the movie. Left in constant pain, Clift became increasingly erratic and unemployable as his addiction to drugs spiralled out of control, until his death in 1966, aged 45, from a heart attack. Peyton has chosen a still from Raintree County as her source image. As with her other works based on photographs, she has let the original ‘get lost’ in her painting, dissolving and distilling its specifics to form her own intensely individual vision. Clift sits as if contemplating his fate, caught in a moment of perfection before his life changed forever. Peyton’s brushwork charges the tiny canvas with a monumental energy: she believes that ‘little things are more powerful because they’re more honest, so people feel them more strongly’ (E. Peyton, quoted in J. Cocker, ‘Elizabeth Peyton,’ Interview Magazine, 26 November 2008). For a moment, Clift seems to be out of the public eye, at peace in Peyton’s quiet corner of personal reverie. Immediate, idealistic and timelessly romantic, Montgomery Clift 1957 celebrates youth and beauty even as they fade from the real world.