Richard Phillips was born in 1962 in Marblehead, Massachusetts. He received his B.F.A in 1984 from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, and his M.F.A in 1986 from Yale University of Art, Connecticut. In his paintings, Richard Phillips engages the complex web of human obsessions to do with sexuality, politics, power and death that are constantly exploited in mainstream media. Subjecting popular images to a range of classical painterly techniques, he estranges their familiarity and thus imbues them with new meaning. Photographic images of politicians are re-cast in neon while supermodels are represented as academic paintings, as if to augment their status as pop icons. over and over again throughout his work, the. Glossy idealism of advertising propaganda is subverted by his underlying resistance to its blatant seduction.
Public collections
Museum of Modern Art (New York)
Whitney Museum of American Art (New York)
Albright-Knox Art Gallery ( Buffalo, New York)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art ( California)
Denver Art Museum ( Colorado)
Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth ( Texas)
Museum of Contemporary Art ( North Miami)
Tate Modern ( London)
Van Abbemusuem ( Eindhoven)
Vanhaerents Art Collection (Brussels)