Overview
The artist’s debut monograph delves into his vibrant paintings, capturing pop culture icons with wit and pathos. Drawing inspiration from iconic figures and imagery from popular media, press photos, and other artworks, McKinniss transforms familiar images of bold-faced names—including Leonardo DiCaprio, Michelle Pfeiffer, Whitney Houston, Dolly Parton, Britney Spears, Halle Berry, Joan Didion, Lil Nas X, and Mariah Carey, to name a few—into strikingly original works. By reinterpreting snapshots of celebrities and working with images with an inbuilt cultural power, McKinniss infuses them with a new layer of depth and significance—making them more powerful, expressive, and ambiguous. His portraits are not mere copies but rather captured moments of collective memory, heightened with emotion and drama. Transitioning from painting friends to internet-sourced imagery, McKinniss taps into emotional wells sublimated within the drama of entertainment, theater, pageantry, presentation, fashion, and glamour in his work. Oscillating between being a fan and an idol, McKinniss illustrates complex roles and identities existing in his art.
Full Product Details
Author: Natasha Stagg ,
Jarrett Earnest
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications
Imprint: Rizzoli International Publications
Weight: 0.567kg
ISBN: 9780847840625
ISBN 10: 084784062
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 08 April 2025
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
""The American figurative painter Sam McKinniss takes images from popular culture and reinterprets them in lush, hyper-saturated oil paintings imbued with a queer sensibility. He's painted Lil Nas X in his pink cowboy suit, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and a self-portrait in the style of a J.Crew advert. But, as his debut monograph from Rizzoli demonstrates, he is much more than a painter of pop culture, and is equally drawn to subjects from the natural world: cows, flowers, which he paints in the style of 19th-century French painter Henri Fantin-Latour, and swans."" — FINANCIAL TIMES
Author Information
Sam McKinniss (b. 1985) works and lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Kent, Connecticut. His figurative paintings are most often sourced from popular culture, the entertainment industry, sports, and the internet. Natasha Stagg is a writer and editor based in New York City. Jarrett Earnest is a writer and curator based in New York City. He is the author of What It Means to Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics (David Zwirner Books, 2018) and Valid Until Sunset (MATTE Editions, 2023).
