Elle has a feature of pop art by Richard Phillips. He covers what he defines as the Most Wanted celebrities.

“Now he’s [Richard Phillips] upping the ante with Most Wanted, a series of 10 portraits of the hottest young celebrities—from Leo DiCaprio and Robert Pattinson to the Taylors (Swift and Momsen), all rendered from those aforementioned red carpet images—opening at White Cube on January 28. The series began as an assignment for pastels of five leading men for V Man in the summer of 2009. “It’s hard to imagine a pastel having any consequence into today’s age, but when my pastel of Robert Pattinson went out into the media during Miami Art Basel, it was at the same time of the New Moon premiere and it went out onto the Internet like crazy. All the New Moon websites and blogs were going nuts; a drawing, an artwork of their star was an amazing thing. It gave me a sense that there was a real desire to see this work,” Phillips said during a recent studio visit, comparing the settings behind these “completely and deliberately synthesized experiences” to “the grain alcohol of media—you take all these rotten potatoes and put it through copper tubing and it’s going to come out a clear liquid.”

In speaking about Kristen Stewart and his inspiration, Phillips said,“I think the easiest one right off the bat was Kristen because of her relationship with Pattinson; plus, New Moon and Twilight were such a success. And just at that time she was hitting it big with The Runaways with Dakota Fanning. The Runaways was kind of a great but wasted opportunity, because the film was horribly directed and terribly shot, but their performances isolated from that were great.”

See the entire gallery here including Robert Pattinson and Dakota Fanning.

Via TA