GIRL, INTERRUPTED

Anna Weyant found extraordinary fame as an artist before she had reached her mid-20s. Then came another kind of attention. Dodie Kazanjian meets the painter at the start of a fresh chapter

Anna Weyant has come a long way in a short time. Even before her debut show at the New York gallery 56 Henry in 2019, there was a waiting list for her work—strange images of young girls whose inner lives seem potentially disturbing, painted in the style of the Dutch Masters, and of the current master John Currin. She was 24 when that first show opened, full of blond innocence and extremely shy. The sharks were already circling the tank, and Ellie Rines, 56 Henry’s young owner, was determined to keep her from being swallowed up by success. “She was so directly speaking to her generation,” Rines remembers, “and I thought she was hitting on something really unique.” There was a healthy dose of mischief and humor in Weyant’s paintings. “Part of what makes it so funny is that it’s coming from someone who seems so innocent,” says Rines.

Fast-forward to 2024. Weyant has conquered the art world instead of being swallowed by it. She shows with the Gagosian gallery (the youngest to do so), which is also Currin’s gallery.

“John was the reason I started painting figures,” Weyant tells me. “I saw one of his paintings in my second year at art school, and it changed my life.” (Her other continuing subject is the still life—her flowers or whatever objects she chooses are as voluptuous and individual as her young women.) Currin says, “She seems to be close to something interesting in terms of good taste and bad taste, disciplined and lazy, controlled and sort of domineering. She’s aware of the power of how terrible figurative painting can be—its strange combination of very low status and very high status, and its obvious uselessness in a sea of photography and cameras.”