Gagosian is pleased to present Richard Avedon: Hollywood, an exhibition of Avedon’s career, in Beverly Hills.
November 4– December 19, 2026
In the summer of 1956, Avedon was in Paris consulting for Funny Face, the 1957 musical directed by Stanley Donen and starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire that was loosely based on Avedon’s own improbable life as a young photographer. He briefly considered relinquishing his career in photography for film directing, and retained a lifelong fascination with Hollywood and the ideas and ideals that it represented.
With subjects including actors, directors, writers, producers, composers, and those who inspired its narratives, Avedon’s photographs embody both the allure and the power dynamics of Hollywood. Conveying an extraordinary sense of intimacy and individuality, they picture significant performers from the golden age of Hollywood into the twenty-first century, from Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, and Marilyn Monroe to Nastassja Kinski, Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
His portraits of Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Michelangelo Antonioni, Steven Spielberg, and others capture images of influential directors who defined filmmaking. Avedon’s perennial interest in musicians is represented by his pictures of those who also appeared in the movies, including Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner, and Lena Horne.
Avedon also revealed other facets of the film industry through his photographs of entertainment executives, financial brokers, agents, and the critics who made or broke careers. Featuring portraits of four presidents whose public images played a crucial role in their ascendancy, the exhibition highlights Hollywood as a uniquely potent political force, where reputations are produced and mythologized. The works on view also include close examinations of key figures and films that would shape the industry for generations to come, such as The Wizard of Oz, Funny Face, and In Cold Blood.