Portrait of Elizabeth Taylor 

Hiro Yamagata’s "Portrait of Elizabeth Taylor" bursts with bold colors and stark contrasts, immediately drawing our eyes into the iconic face. Yamagata employs a fragmented approach, using blocks of unnatural color to construct Taylor’s features. We see lavender skin tones, green shadows, and a halo of rainbow hues that both defines and abstracts her likeness. This technique plays with our perception, challenging the traditional representation of portraiture. The addition of simple motifs, like the heart, and the rainbow lines, destabilizes the perception of the person, and engages with new ways of thinking about space. The flatness of the composition and the lack of traditional shading situate the work within a Pop Art aesthetic, echoing artists like Warhol. Yet, Yamagata’s color choices, fracturing the image into semiotic components, allow us to consider how fame and identity are constructed through visual signs and cultural codes. This portrait, in its vibrant yet artificial rendering, questions the very nature of celebrity.