Portrait of Elvis Presley by Red Grooms

Red Grooms, like fellow Tennessean William Eggleston (whose work is also featured in “One Life: Echoes of Elvis”), has often memorialized Elvis in his art.

In this image, he arms Elvis with his trademark flashy apparel and accompanying guitar, but a slightly closer observation will yield several other components of Elvis’s iconographic ensemble—the lip curl, the slick, combed-back hair, the omnipresent Cadillac, Graceland, and the stylized stage posture. One of the famous gates of Graceland is swung open behind the entertainer while a woman in a red dress and black high heels observes the singer from the porch of the mansion.

Red Grooms is to American art as Mark Twain is to American writing; he is the foremost humorist in his discipline. He is also a prolific artist who works in many media.

Warren Perry, curator of “One Life: Echoes of Elvis”, recently discussed Elvis Presley and his portrait by Red Grooms.  “One Life: Echoes of Elvis” is on view at the National Portrait Gallery through August 29, 2010. 

>> Listen to Warren Perry's Face-to-Face talk on Elvis Presley (23:13)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is tomorrow (April 8), when curator Ann Shumard speaks about Lena Horne. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Article by Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery