The greatest celebrity portraits combine a deep respect for their subject with a desire to capture their essence beyond the “famous” persona. From David Hockney and Andy Warhol to Terry O'Neill and Coco Dávez, discover the artists whose admiration for their chosen subjects shines through in their work.
When David Hockney’s portrait of Harry Styles was unveiled last week on Vogue.co.uk, it revealed so much more than simply a new artwork from the octogenarian artist. Before Styles sat for Hockney in May 2022, the artist was oblivious to just how famous the young singer was. “I wasn’t really aware of his celebrity then,” Hockney says in the Vogue article. “He was just another person who came to the studio.” In just a few days, a dialogue formed between the artist and sitter that played out on canvas, with Hockney depicting Styles not as the global superstar dressed in sequins but as a person, relaxed and at ease, with none of the glitz and glamour of his on-stage persona.
Artists have been painting well-known faces for millennia, capturing likenesses in their own unique styles to appear on everything from paintings to coins and banknotes. Before the invention of the camera, commissioning a portrait was a means of memorialising oneself in a piece that both flattered the sitter and reflected one’s wealth and tastes. Today, with the cameras on mobile phones often rivalling the quality of a professional camera, you can scroll through social media and discover new portraits every day that not only serve as pieces of history but also give an insight into the relationship between artist and celebrity.
David Hockney painting the potrait of singer Harry Styles © JP Gonçalves de Lima
Andy Warhol was one of the first artists to utilise the power of fame in his art, pre-empting our obsession with celebrity with his iconic images of stars like Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor and Elvis Presley. These silkscreen portraits became a highly lucrative form of art for Warhol, whose business brain quickly saw the benefits of what was in essence a brand collaboration between two famous names, the star and himself.
At the height of his fame, Warhol turned his attention to Mick Jagger, frontman of The Rolling Stones, creating one of his most valuable series of prints. Close friends since Warhol had designed the cover artwork for the album Sticky Fingers, in the summer of 1975, Jagger rented Warhol’s Long Island home. It was here that Warhol captured the famous polaroid images that would form the basis of the series of 10 prints of the rock star.
The admiration between the two friends radiates out from the works, with Jagger playing up to Warhol’s camera in what marked an important stylistic turning point in Warhol’s artistic career that saw him using his own photographs of his subjects, rather than pre-existing imagery. In what was an incredibly shrewd marketing ploy, Warhol also got Jagger to sign the prints, with the dual signature, and Jagger’s fame, making this series among Warhol’s most valuable.
Other collaborations are more organic, like the late photographer Terry O’Neill’s portrait of a young Kate Moss from 1993. “I remember I was at a modelling agency, and I saw this young girl sitting in the office. She just struck me, and I knew she’d take a great photo,” explained O’Neill in Photographer magazine. “She had something incredibly special, and I could see that straight away.” O’Neill had a real knack for being able to put his sitters at ease and often formed close relationships with them, enabling him to capture incredibly intimate shots of stars at the height of their fame.
For today’s contemporary artists, the power of celebrity is as alluring as ever. Bradley Theodore, whose portraits of well-known faces like Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld fuse street art, pop art and portraiture, uses the medium to not only convey the visual aspect of the person but also to embody the feeling and spirit of his subjects.
Similarly, Spanish artist Coco Dávez catches the essence of cultural icons she admires and has grown up with, with her faceless portraits immediately recognisable. From Prince to Amy Winehouse, Dávez is inspired by the energy of her famous subjects and feels a deep resonance with their aura, which becomes the colour of their face. In just a few simple colours, the artist challenges viewers to think about what constitutes an icon in our society today.
Discover the artists at Maddox who are putting their signature spin on the art of celebrity portraiture, below.
