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Modern British & Irish Art

Kate Moss – Modern Muse

Launch Slideshow

When model scout Sarah Doukas spotted a 14-year-old Kate Moss in the departures lounge of JFK airport, she could have had no idea what her discovery become a fashion phenomenon. Now one of the most famous women on the planet, Moss is a style icon. Endlessly watchable, never predictable, always natural and utterly unpretentious, her sense of style is innate, instinctive and impeccable. Not surprisingly, she has been a muse to contemporary artists, who have captured her likeness in photographs, sculptures and more. The upcoming Made in Britain sale on includes a range of Moss-inspired works. Click ahead for the gorgeous highlights.

Made In Britain
28 September | London

Kate Moss – Modern Muse

  • Chris Levine, Kate Moss (She's Light), 2014. Estimate £10,000–15,000.
    Chris Levine is a photographer who works across many mediums in search of sensory experiences through image and form. In this luminous diptych , Levine teamed up with the make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury. Inspired by Levine’s revelatory portrait of the Queen, Tilbury knew that Levine’s next subject had to be her close friend Kate Moss. Depicted against a stark white background, the delicate paleness of Moss’s skin combined with the high exposure of the image allows Levine to portray her as an effect of light, almost reduced to just her renowned green eyes and lacquered lips. Reminiscent of Warhol’s graphic celebrity portraiture, this work captures the radiant glow of a cultural icon.

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  • Mary McCartney, Kate in Red Dress, 2005. Estimate £5,000–7,000.
    McCartney has an eye for wonderfully unguarded moments. The empathy she shares with her subjects is what leads her to capture these unforgettable occurrences. In this series of colour images, inspired by the erotic Polaroids by Carlo Mollino, Moss wears a dress designed by McCartney’s sister Stella.

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  • Chris Levine, She's Light (Laser 2), 2013. Estimate £18,000–25,000.
    Many artists perceive the power of their art in movement, but Chris Levine seeks to display the intrinsic power of stillness. His celebrity subjects such as Moss and  Queen Elizabeth might be among the most photographed people in the world, but Levine has a talent for capturing them at rest, as if in the calm of the media storm. Speaking about his work, he said, “every opportunity I got [to shoot a portrait], I tried to distil it back to just pure essence without any suggestion or iconography or anything. I’m experimenting with that and trying to get stillness in the image.”

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  • Bansky, Kate Moss, 2005. Estimate £30,000–50,000.
    The Kate Moss Collection by Banksy is based on Andy Warhol’s iconic Marilyn series, appropriating the supermodel’s visage. In a contemporary take on the Pop masterpieces, Banksy has superimposed Monroe’s hair onto a grey-scale image of Moss, and then stained the portrait with an assortment of vibrant colours. Banksy’s satirical work appeals to the masses in a time when critical consumerism is integral to an urban lifestyle. Just as his identity continues to remain anonymous, his real prints have become a global commodity and Moss becomes an ironic icon built from a post-consumer consumer-culture.

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  • Marc Quinn, Sleeping Beauty, 2005. Estimate £5,000–7,000.
    In this work Marc Quinn has cast Moss’s head in spray-painted bronze, so that she appears asleep but also seemingly lifeless as suggested by the fairy-tale title. Celebrities like Moss have become so iconic in our modern lives that some have said they have even replaced divinity. Quinn has quite literally immortalised her so that her fame will endure for ever more. He has said of the work, “do we create images or do images form us? What is interesting to me about Kate Moss is that she is someone whose image has completely separated from her real self and this image has a life of its own”.

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