Elizabeth Peyton: Aire and Angels


Thin exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of work by Elizabeth Peyton from the last ten years.

The pictures in this show were quite small and were sparsely hung. They were largely based on photographs which gave them a detached feeling. I didn’t engage with them.

I liked the idea of hanging some of them around the general collection and it was a nice way of getting people to look at the rest of the gallery but I didn’t always see the connection and sometimes the larger more ornate pictures just seemed to make them look smaller. I felt Queen Elizabeth I was looking down her nose at Kurt Cobain.

Closes 5 January 2020

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