Over 40 years ago, Andy Warhol promoted the concept that artists are celebrities, just as worthy of portrayal as other cultural icons. Likeness: Portraits of Artists by Other Artists begins where Warhol left off. Presenting visually striking and conceptually diverse works in a range of mediums, Likeness is the first exhibition and catalogue to propose a recent history of artists' representations of other artists--of friends, peers, and idols. While any portrait is both a document and a personal record of the relationship between the artist and his or her subject, blurring distinctions between public and private, portraits of artists further enrich the situation; they commemorate and concretize the intimate social dramas of the art world and the economies of exchange. Selected here are over 50 paintings, drawings, photographs, and works in other media, created by a loose network of artists primarily active in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Berlin during the past three decades.
Higgs, Matthew, Killian, Kevin and Robbins, David, Likeness: Portraits of Artists by Other Artists, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco and Independent Curators International, New York, 2004.71 pages, softcover. ISBN: 9780972508032. $22.95
Foreword and Acknowledgements by Judith Olch Richards and Ralph Rugoff; essays by Matthew Higgs, Kevin Killian, and David Robbins.
