Born 1962, Marblehead, Massachusetts
Lives and works in New York

Richard Phillips has spent more than three decades examining how photographs shape the
public identities of their subjects. After studying painting at Massachusetts College of Art
and Yale, he began working from images found in fashion magazines and other printed
sources. His subjects have since ranged from models and politicians to actors and
musicians.

Phillips translates existing photographs through drawing and the deliberate methods of
traditional painting. Cropping, enlargement, and meticulous execution preserve the
immediate appeal of the original image while revealing how carefully it has been
constructed. His work concerns not simply celebrity, but the process by which publishing,
advertising, and entertainment turn a person into a public image.

Phillips participated in the 1997 Whitney Biennial and has had solo exhibitions at
Kunsthalle Zürich, Kunstverein Hamburg, Le Consortium, the Swiss Institute, White
Cube, and Gagosian. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art,
the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Tate.

Best Picture  

2024 Nominees, 2024
Charcoal, chalk, and pastel on gray-toned paper

Richard Phillips created these twelve portraits for TheWrapBook: The Art of Cinema 2024.
First published as a folio titled 2024 Nominees, this exhibition marks the U.S. premiere of
the complete series of twelve original drawings.

The series returns to a subject Phillips explored in his 2011 exhibition Most Wanted: the
carefully managed image of the celebrity before the press. Phillips searched through
publicity photographs for moments that departed from the familiar red-carpet pose and
suggested something less rehearsed. Through charcoal, chalk, and pastel, he slows down
and softens images originally made for rapid circulation.

Presented here in film pairings, the portraits represent Oppenheimer, Barbie, Maestro,
Killers of the Flower Moon, Priscilla, and Past Lives. Each actor appears in two roles: as a
performer on screen and as a public figure performing for the camera. The exhibition title
carries a related double meaning: cinema's most prominent award and the selection of one
image as the definitive picture of a person.