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MTVHollywoodCrushRecently, artist Richard Phillips decided to paint some of the brightest young Hollywood stars for his "Most Wanted" Exhibit at the White Cube Gallery in London. The exhibition featured Phillips' take on stars like Taylor Swift, Zac Efron, Dakota Fanning, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kristen Stewart and, yes, even Robert Pattinson and that famous head of hair.

The show may have wrapped up a few weeks back, but in anticipation of "MTV First: Robert Pattinson," we wanted to bring you all the best bites from our interview with the artist, who dished about what makes Robert Pattinson one of the "Most Wanted" in Hollywood.
"I think that the greatest pressure for me was getting Robert Pattinson's expression right because he is...certainly Leo is important in terms of his character and the gravitas he has, but with Robert it's that kind of knowing smirk or that sexy look in his masculine, yet feminine qualities that people die for that's a hard thing to grab," Phillips explained of painting the "Twilight" hottie and wanting to get it just right. "You’ve got all of those components and in a painting how do you bring it together, that’s the thing that becomes the question and I had to answer that in paint."

Phillips did find the way to make it work, he explained, "One thing that I will say is that having the highlight in his one eye and no highlight in the other eye gives him that knowing look. Like in one eye he already knows you; in the other eye he's addressing you," he said. "There's tricks within the portrait, the little curve outside his mouth, those are the things that bring out his character…that and his tousled hair."

Richard Phillips talks to VanityFair about Rob's portrait

“After holding a contest within my studio to find the best red carpet face from the constant river of images, a composite was made from the best of the best of Pattinson’s expressions. The colorful and detailed Louis Vuitton background was to suggest a fictitious brand endorsement context that was commensurate with his position as the most popular member of the group. The difficulty became not how to render his face so he could be seen, but how to paint his presence so he could be inescapably felt when standing in front of the painting. My painting of Robert Pattinson began to fulfill its intention of giving pause, to question our relationship to the constant appearance and simultaneous dismissal of our disembodied selves in relation to a system that generates a forced intimacy with commercially enforced exceptionalism.”

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“Most Wanted” opens January 27 at White Cube in London and is on display until March 5.

And for those in New York:  The American Federation of Arts (AFA) is pleased to announce that artist Richard Phillips will be giving the second ArtTalk of 2011, to be held at Christie’s on Wednesday, March 9, at 6:30 p.m. ArtTalks, the AFA’s lecture series, features notable figures in the art world. Following Phillips’s lecture, audience members are invited to participate in a question-and-answer session and wine reception. In-kind support for ArtTalks is provided by Christie’s. Tickets can be purchased online here.

pattinsonlife

Kristen's portrait is also featured in Phillips' "Most Wanted' Series. In case you missed it

Now, side-by-side. Previously, these paintings were facing each other

ArtInfo.com Why Would a Serious Artist Paint Robert Pattinson: Q and A with Richard Phillips.

ArtInfo: The paintings almost begin to look like teenybopper posters — like something you'd paste on your wall as a 12-year-old. And the weird thing about those posters is that they represent a kind of pre-sexual fetishization. How does sex play into these images?
Richard Phillips: "If one looks at the "Twilight" series objectively, a comparison could be drawn to the avant-garde practice of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, or Steve Reich. Instead of sustaining a note or holding an awkward position or repeating an appropriated rhythmic progression, the actors of "Twilight" sustain irresolvable teenage emotions for 2 1/2 hours without any sexual release. The production of this experience taps into a universal tween condition that once passed through can only be accessed again through externally induced psychological trauma. Sex is omnipresent in all these images but is experienced unreservedly only by those currently going through availability and the capability to satisfy forbidden sexual desire. All of this translates to a multi-billion dollar industry that may or may not lend its agency of legitimization to raise awareness of that which has the pretense to call itself contemporary art." Click here to read the full Q and A

If you missed the earlier post about Rob and Kristen being in Richard Phillips' 'Most Wanted' Pop Art Collection . Click here

via RPattzBaby

Woah! Rob, Kristen and Twilight in pop culture. A pretty intense one. 

Elle.com New York painter Richard Phillips gives us an exclusive first look at his newest Most Wanted portraits, and talks candidly about his ultra-famous subjects.

Rob and Kristen's images facing each other.  Teehee 

Kristen Stewart, 2010
“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. And just at that time she was hitting it big with The Runaways with Dakota Fanning. The Runaways was kind of a great but wasted opportunity, because the film was horribly directed and terribly shot, but their performances isolated from that were great.”

Robert Pattinson, 2009
“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].”

 Richard Phillips "The series began as an assignment for pastels of five leading men for V Man in the summer of 2009. “It’s hard to imagine a pastel having any consequence into today’s age, but when my pastel of Robert Pattinson went out into the media during Miami Art Basel, it was at the same time of the New Moon premiere and it went out onto the Internet like crazy. All the New Moon websites and blogs were going nuts; a drawing, an artwork of their star was an amazing thing. It gave me a sense that there was a real desire to see this work,”

kstewartnews

I first posted Rob's pop art for VMan way back in Dec 2009