Brandbild (Sunburn)

Brandbild (Sunburn)

1997
Artist
Richard Phillips, American, 1962
Born: Marblehead, MA
Work Locations: New York, NY
Country
United States
Object
painting
Medium
oil paint on linen
Accession Number
2016.144
Credit Line
Gift from Vicki and Kent Logan to the Collection of the Denver Art Museum
Richard Phillips (American). Brandbild (Sunburn). 1997. oil paint on linen. Gift from Vicki and Kent Logan to the Collection of the Denver Art Museum. 2016.144.
Dimensions
height: 116 in, 294.6400 cm; width: 78 in, 198.1200 cm
Department
Modern and Contemporary Art
Collection
Modern and Contemporary Art

Richard Phillips enlarges images from marketing and celebrity culture to a monumental scale resulting in strikingly distinctive paintings. For Phillips, art, fashion, and commerce merge into huge photorealistic death masks for eighties icons such as Rob Lowe or Michael Jackson. But these images are not completely emotionally or psychologically vapid. Behind the flat, affectless, and detached surfaces of these depictions lies a hint of wistful melancholy, a nostalgic longing for a decade of decadence. Thus, glamour is tinged with the hint of decay, and the high fashion of yesterday feels painfully pastiche.  

"Brandbild" depicts glossy, idealized glamour of a bygone age, when indulgence and frivolity ruled. A woman’s face encompasses the entirety of the canvas. A tawny tone bathes her face, save for her eyes and directly below her nose. Her perfectly glamorous face rendered imperfect.

Richard Phillips received his BFA in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 1984, and his MFA in painting from Yale University School of Art in 1986. He currently lives and works in New York.

© Richard Phillips

Known Provenance
Purchased 1998 by Vicki and Kent Logan from Petzel Gallery, New York; gifted 2016 to the Denver Art Museum by Vicki and Kent Logan
Exhibition History
  • "Hospital"— Max Hetzler Gallery, Berlin [11/29/1997 - 01/10/1998] (curated by Sarah Morris)
  • "Richard Phillips"— Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland [11/4/2000 - 12/31/2000]
  • "In Limbo"— University of Denver, Victoria H. Myhren Gallery, Denver, Colorado [01/13/2005 - 03/11/2005]
  • "Earth and Fire"— Denver Art Museum [06/11/2011 - 08/05/2012] (loan request originally February 2011 - February 2013)

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