Matthew Rolston Shares 'Art People' Secrets At Laguna Art Museum

LAGUNA BEACH, CA— During the two weeks that Matthew Rolston took portraits backstage at the Pageant of the Masters in the summer of 2016, he became very close to the volunteers and staff. So much so that director Diane Challis Davy invited him to perform in one of the tableaux vivants. He immediately chose to be in the annual finale, Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”

Rolston’s body was thoroughly measured, as all volunteers are who audition, and it turns out he best fits the part of Judas.

Well, he wasn’t too pleased about that role. What about St. Matthew? "Yes, Matthew could play Matthew," but he had to stand on a box to meet the height requirement.

That’s just one of the many backstories the photographer shared at Laguna Art Museum Thursday night when he was interviewed by friend and culture journalist Christina Binkley on the making of “Art People: The Pageant Portraits.” Binkley is a bestselling author, editor-at-large for Vogue Business, and she shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of 9/11 at the Wall Street Journal, where she worked for 23 years.

Executive director Julie Perlin Lee began her tenure at the museum just before "Art People" opened. In her introduction, she praised Rolston as a visionary and stated that he is “incredibly generous in every way.”

And so he was for the 90 minutes he chatted with Binkley, sharing secrets during a tightly prepared slide show of his work and influences. He traced the childhood experiences—such as going to the Pageant of the Masters, visiting Huntington Library, adoring a portrait of Marlene Dietrich that hung in his maternal grandfather’s office—that led to his career as a portraitist and the making of “Art People.”

If you haven’t seen the exhibit yet, go. Laguna’s art festivals may be winding down for the summer, but the show is up through October 24.

Though Patch has viewed “Art People” several times, we’d never noticed a hidden nugget until Rolston pointed it out. In all the photos where his subject looks directly into the camera, there’s a gleam of light in the center of each pupil. Inside that gleam, you can see a silhouette of the photographer.

Rolston said if it had been for a magazine assignment, of course, he would have removed it. But not for “Art People.” We see the bloodshot eyes, yellow teeth, and imperfections in the skin beneath the volunteers' makeup. No retouching.

“Little did I know,” he said, “that I’d ever photograph gilded acne.”

After making the joke, he summed up his take on photographing human beings this way: “We are unfinished and imperfect. That’s something to recognize and to celebrate.”

Another thing to look for in the pageant portraits is how Rolston plays with proportion and scale. As in Gainsborough’s monumental portraits at the Huntington that have stuck with him, Rolston’s photos of Eve and the Gold Girl are majestic, superhuman, and 8 feet tall. When a slide showed his printer standing next to the final print of Gold Girl, he quipped: “Look, her hand is larger than Frank’s head.”

Binkley was crucial to Rolston’s tenacious efforts to shoot the pageant portraits, and an essay of hers is included in the "Art People" catalog. After a year of asking for permission, he gave up. Another year passed; then, he had a brainstorm. Rolston enlisted Binkley to write a story on the pageant for the Wall Street Journal and to hire him as the photographer for the piece.

He shot Challis Davy and longtime scriptwriter Dan Duling and won them over.

“It’s a wonderful group of people,” he said of pageant staff and volunteers. “I believe in their mission: to educate people about art … in an accessible and entertaining way.”

Rolston appears in this year’s pageant, as well, but not in costume and makeup. Several of his “Last Supper” portraits from “Art People” are projected in the lead-up to the finale.

Don't miss the video that accompanies the exhibition to see Rolston's transformation into St. Matthew.