Elizabeth Peyton

1. ELLIOTT SMITH

   I had never heard of Elliott Smith until last year’s Oscars. He was nominated for a song on the sound track of Good Will Hunting (stupid movie). And there in the midst of all the usual Oscar goofiness and shiny Hollywood splendor was Elliott, who looked alarmingly like a real person in this setting. He dressed up in a white suit and he wasn’t pretty in an obvious way but then his eyes were too blue and he began to sing. His voice was quiet and tender and beautiful and true and so vulnerable. And some how it felt like a big “fuck you” to all of the insincerity and tastelessness of the culture that was being celebrated that evening. And then I got some albums and thought “gee, Elliott’s really sad” and put them away for a while. And then I started listening to the albums again on the Walkman. Even Elliott Smith’s breath is beautiful. On the recordings his voice is cracking and breaking, the guitar is kind of squeaking, and his voice lifts and lifts and intertwines with the melody and it’s pop heaven. I like that his music is so simple, just him and his voice and his guitar trying to deal with his hangover and the idea that the Beatles existed and wanting to turn it all into these beautiful songs.

2. VERSAILLES/LOUIS XIV

   “Louis was often neglected; at times in those unroyal days [during the Fronde], he knew poverty in shabby dress and stinted food. No one even seemed to bother about his education.”—Will and Ariel Durant. Seeing Louis at the age of twenty-two, Jean de La Fontaine exclaimed, “Do you think that the world has many kings of figure so beautiful, of appearance so fine? . . . And when I see him I imagine I see Grandeur herself in person.” From a very young age (he was king from the age of five), Louis sought to be the most glorious king who ever lived and set out to remake the world in his image. No man so clearly understood the political power of appearances. From the hundreds of bows and buckles he adorned himself with to the enormity of his home, he made it clear he was the most powerful man in the most powerful place on the planet. The Durants: "To be invited to court became a passion only third to hunger and sex, even to be there for a day, Versailles never lets you down. Walking back toward the palace in the evening, looking up to see the king’s apartments ablaze, you can still feel his presence and all the beauty he created. Not new but still astounding.

3. PASSER-BY

   “Passer-by, stop . . .This edifice has been consecrated to the Muses and to joy under the auspices of the fat black pussy. Passer-by, be modern!”

4. EDDIE IZZARD, DRESSED TO KILL

   The latest video release by English comedian Eddie Izzard. It is from a live show in San Francisco, so there are lots of stupid Americans who don’t know history jokes. More jokes about the Bible (“men with big fuck-off beards”), the royal family, being a transvestite. By the end I was feeling like a really smart American because he did the encore almost entirely in French and I was laughing at the whole thing.

5. DAVID HOCKNEY, RETROSPEKTIVE PHOTOWORKS

   This catalogue is from a show that originated at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne in 1997. Unfortunately it’s in German, but the interview in the front looks like it’s good. The best part, though, are the photos dating from the ’60s to now—travel pictures, studies for paintings, and photo-artworks. They are all beautiful pictures and so Hockney-like, and the still lifes remind me a lot of Wolfgang Tillmans’s. The very, very best pictures are Self Portrait, Karlsbad, 1970 and Gregory and Mark, Paris 1975—in the pictures of Gregory and Mark, mostly undressed in a bathroom, the real plus is that Hockney is there too in the same state!

6. LEONARDO DICAPRIO IN WOODY ALLEN'S CELEBRITY

   Ten electrifying minutes of seeing Leonardo be what he really is. Usually we
   have to see him being nice and innocent. Here he is a huuuuge star: powerful, arrogant, and beautiful.

7. BRET EASTON ELLIS, GLAMORAMA

   So what is so vapid about pointing out that leading a vacant, hedonistic, celebrity-obsessed life is equal to violent murder and terrorism? Glamorama’s kind of like reading a hundred issues of People magazine and watching snuff movies at the same time, but it’s incredibly readable and not without moral value, even if in an obvious way.

8. GUCCI SPRING COLLECTION/LUCY BARNES

   I’ve only seen photos of the Gucci spring clothes but they look really great: pink silk hip huggers with painted flowers and appliqués! And Lucy Barnes has a new shop, “FIFTY,” at 50 Spring Street, that also offers a welcome relief of colorful, glamorous, really well-made clothes. Maybe the millennium won’t be minimal . . .

9. HELLO! MAGAZINE

   Big British weekly glossy with obscure royal tell-ails and not-so-obscure present-day royal goings-on. Also great for following Posh and David and Patsy and Liam.

10. PULP, THE PARK IS MINE

    Recorded live, Finsbury Park, in July 1988: The best “live” video of the best band to see live.