It’s been nearly 20 years since Vanity Fair presented an art-themed issue. That one came with Brad Pitt on the cover, in one of Robert Wilson’s life-size video portraits. The magazine’s return to the form was to feature the indomitable, undefinable musician Charli xcx on its cover; the first and only pick to make art out of Charli was Issy Wood, an equally thrilling London-based painter (and musician herself). Wood has risen to prominence painting the quotidian elements that punctuate the day-to-day IRL and scrolling milieu of someone like Charli: leather car interiors, puffy jackets, homeware accoutrements, jewelry, pets, and other elements that orbit the Brat universe.
Wood, who currently has a solo show at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, agreed to the assignment, painting an original of Charli for a limited-edition run of issues to complement photographer Aidan Zamiri’s cover shoot. She hit the ground running, producing four different paintings.
“I was a tragic overachiever at school and always did my homework the night it was set,” says Wood.
The chosen work, painted on orange velvet, details Charli’s face and trademark brows, with Wood’s flourishes of white swoops and golden stars falling down the canvas. It’s clearly Charli and clearly Issy.
Wood admits that it would have never occurred to her to paint somebody like Charli without VF initiating it. “The famous women I’ve painted in the past are in a different aesthetic category,” she says. “Which is a polite way of saying they have had a lot of plastic surgery.”
Wood was inspired to peer at Charli through her own lens, pulling inspiration from things like “the length and quality of her career prior to the global success of Brat, the throwaway candor of her lyrics, the Britishness we both share,” she says.
She knew that the task at hand—painting one of the most recognizable pop stars in the world—would be a challenge, possibly made more complex as Charli sheds her bright green brat persona to try her hand at acting in movies. If the result resembles the genre of fan art, Wood says, “I’m okay with that, because fan art is one of the purest and most tender art forms we have.”
Hair products by Dyson; makeup products by Clé de Peau Beauté. Hair, James Tarquin; makeup, Czar Joshua Ventura. For details, go to Vf.com/credits.
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