Art Talk
Matthew Rolston at Fahey/Klein Gallery
Hunter Drohojowska-Philp says Oscar week is an ideal time to appreciate celebrity portraiture of Rolston’s Hollywood Royale
By Hunter Drohojowska-Philp • • 4m ListenIt is a cliché that L.A. does indeed have seasons: fires, floods, earthquakes and the Academy Awards. We are in that last season this week and one art gallery in particular has made note.
Fahey/Klein Gallery in Hollywood, known for its long-term support of photographers associated with glamour, beauty and celebrity, is showing a survey of pictures by Matthew Rolston.
Matthew Rolston. Madonna as Marlene, Los Angeles, 1986. © MRPI (Courtesy Fahey/Klein Los Angeles)
Rolston, however, carefully honed a contemporary edge in his pictures, borrowing from the past to enliven the present. For instance, he posed Madonna in clothing and set design based on Josef von Sternberg's earlier portrait of Marlene Dietrich from the Paramount film Morocco. By playing with the history of glamour photography, Rolston knowingly operates in our post-modern realm, quoting from familiar or obscure sources to build an image that operates on multiple layers.
Matthew Rolston. Michael Jackson, King, Los Angeles, 1985. © MRPI (Courtesy Fahey/Klein Los Angeles)
Gender fluidity is a buzzy term these days but there is little doubt that Rolston was playing with sexual identity from the outset. Though known for enhancing beauty and sexuality — Cybill Shepherd lounging in a white bathing suit, Anna Nicole Smith in a white fur with a white kitten, Sly Stallone outfitted for the polo field — Rolston staged exacting pictures of Madonna and Drew Barrymore in men’s garb, Prince as a long- haired psychedelic deity in lipstick and eyeliner.
Matthew Rolston. Drew Barrymore, Portrait as a Boy, Los Angeles, 1991. © MRPI (Courtesy Fahey/Klein Los Angeles)
Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles, a compendium of his greatest hits from the 1980's published by teNeues. hollywoodroyale.com. The book examines Rolston’s sophisticated but not slavish appreciation of celebrity photography in the distant and recent past. It also provides an opportunity to spend more time with the pictures, which anyone would relish.
Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles, Full Cover, Angled View. Published by teNeues, Germany.
And if Hollywood Royale presents Rolston’s past glories, his most recent photographs, compelling portraits of actors in make-up and costumes from Laguna’s historic Pageant of the Masters, is also on view at Ralph Pucci Los Angeles through March 9.
