Yesterday, I went to see "Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton," the poorly titled retrospective of said painter at the dismal, cheaply outfitted New Museum. I was dreading it a little bit. I've had a (probably unfounded) low opinion of Peyton for a while, made all the worse by the announcement of this show, and a starry-eyed interview I heard in which she really seemed to be playing dumb (a not uncommon and pretty dreadful tendency of some female artists).
So, the canvases (as well as a few really lovely works on paper) are expert, lush, quintessential jewels, the brighter the better. Peyton handles paint with aplomb; the images are quiet and easy. The majority of the works are hilariously similar portarits of androgynous boys (and recently a few girls), all romantic death-pallor, floppy hair, and ruby lips. Some, particularly from the late nineties (punchy and a little rave-y), are downright stylish. Each time I was drawn to a piece, I felt an intense desire to see it in its natural habitat, the brightspot of a fine room.
I'd discovered that I liked her paintings, and the more I let go of my resentments, the better I felt. I had also discovered that the root of my distaste for Peyton was in her words, the words of her critics and admirers, the curators of the show. I do not read her the same way. For me, the work is banal, redundant, dull-making, and this is the very thing I like about it. She is no great intellectual, a poor historian and cultural anthropologist. Painting Kurt Cobain was boring and obvious in 1995, and it is boring and obvious now—not the revealing, incisive choice it might have been. She does not crown and valorize her subjects, make them "Live Forever" (whatever the hell that means); she makes them all part of a long run of small, nearly identical pictures, a sweet game of aesthetics for a Saturday afternoon.
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