Russell Young
Russell Young, born in 1959 in Yorkshire, is a British-American artist best known for his large-scale silkscreen paintings examining cultural icons, the nature of fame, and the souring of the American Dream. His earliest breakthrough was his photography of George Michael for the sleeve of the album Faith in 1987. Young photographed many music stars throughout the 1970s and 1980s, including Morrissey, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, REM, The Smiths, Bauhaus, Diana Ross, Paul Newman, Björk, and many others. He went on to shoot over 100 music videos for leading artists during MTV’s height in the 1990s, which brought him to the United States.
Young eventually moved to California, where he began his current practice with his sold-out show Pig Portraits, in Los Angeles in 2003. The many series that have followed, including his ongoing Heroes + Heroines and WEST, demonstrate his visceral, analog processes and signature use of diamond dust. He has exhibited across the world in numerous galleries alongside masterclass artists, institutions, and cultural figures. These include museum exhibitions at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai, the Multimedia Art Museum Moscow, the Cornell Art Museum, the Polk Museum of Art, and the Goss-Michael Foundation. Young’s work is included in many prominent private and institutional collections, including those of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, David Bowie, Drake, Angelina Jolie, David Hockney, Kayne West, Brad Pitt, and others, as well as The Getty Collection in Los Angeles and The White House Collection in Washington, D.C.
Elvis Heartbreak Hotel
Ali
Marilyn Portrait
Marilyn Desire
Marilyn Crying
The Cowboy
Marilyn Chanel
Bardot Thunder
Muhammad Ali
Magnificent Seven
James Dean
Elvis Heartbreak Hotel
Marilyn Crying
Marilyn Portrait
