"Most Wanted" Celebrity Portraits by Richard Phillips

  Kristen Steward:
 “I think the easiest one right off the bat was Kristen because of her relationship with Pattinson; plus, New Moon and Twilight were such a success"

   Today everybody is obsessed with celebrities - they are literally everywhere: on the TV, on billboards, in magazines. That cultural phenomenon inspired the hyper-realist artist Richard Phillips to create a collection of 10 portraits depicting some of the currently most popular stars.
   The"Most Wanted" exhibition, displayed in the White Cube in London, features the Twilight pair Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, their co-worker Dakota Fanning, Leonardo Dicaprio, Zac Efron, Justin Timberlake, Gossip Girl stars Taylor Momsen and Chace Crawford along with singers Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.
   Painted on a backdrop of luxury fashion logos such as Versace and Gucci, the exhibition sets out to show the relationship between celebrity, fashion and its audience.

 Dakota Fanning: 

"She has a very innocent look and should be the one you feel the most relaxed with because of the feelings she evokes. But the Dakota Fanning image scares me the most.”

   
Here is what the painter himself revealed about his artwork:
   "The Most Wanted exhibition conveys the irreducible condition that our notion of contemporary culture has reached, where all forms of artistic endeavour must submit to the dominant presence of celebrity endorsement and luxury brand legitimisation through sponsorship in order to sustain and safeguard its existence. 
   The large-scale, traditionally-painted portraits of the stars set against fashion logo step-and-repeat backdrops form an uncannily humanised version of this primary economic realism.”

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Robert Pattinson: “The demand for getting things right with Pattinson—getting the lips right, the beard right—is important because all the character he has in his classic ‘I’ve seen it all before’ look is made up of all those constituent parts. A friend of mine stopped by and said, ’There’s a subliminal message in his beard, but I can’t make it out.’ There isn’t [laughs].”

Leonardo Dicaprio:
"The reason I included Leonardo is because he is the ultimate template of desire for what these people could become. He starts out in Romeo & Juliet and he became the full trajectory of what a teen heartthrob could become: an Oscar-nominated actor."

Justin Timberlake:
 “The eyes and the intensity of his expression are pure Justin; they’re instantly recognizable, but this style of half-transparent beard that four of the five guys have—I don’t think Zac quite got there [laughs]"

Zac Efron: “It’s like in James [Frey’s] story about where things go when they become incredible superstars to the point where they are no longer themselves, and they have to send out body doubles and cars going in the wrong direction."

Chace Crawford:
"Chase gets a rainbow halo around him. In some cases it’s just aesthetic; in some cases it had to do with humor about the assumptions that are made about the individuals. In Chase’s case, people are saying that he and Ed [Westwick], who are roommates together, are together, which is ridiculous, but it’s kind of fun. So the rainbow around him also just makes him look that much more attractive. He’s a very attractive young man.”

Taylor Momsen:
 "I put her in there and a lot of people said, ’Why do you have Taylor Momsen in there?’ But with her pretty reckless, bad-girl image and the crazy things she’s doing in the press, she’s almost out-Courtneying Courtney at this point, honestly. Plus, she looks great, and she has more of a masculine feeling in her pose than a lot of the men do in this whole series.” 

Miley Cyrus: “For sure, Miley Cyrus made sense. To my mind, if there’s Zac, there has to be Miley, being the Disney queen of Hannah Montana fame."

Taylor Swift: “There’s no attempt at naturalism here, and in a way the Taylor Swift painting is oddly one of the most painterly ones; with her glitter dress and dripping earrings, they’re all made out of paint. There was no attempt at rendering diamonds or glitter, which most photo-realists would fall all over themselves to do."