MATTHEW RUSSELL ROLSTON IS an American artist, photographer, and director known for his signature lighting techniques and detailed approach to art direction and design. He has been repeatedly identified throughout his career with the revival and modern expression of Hollywood glamour.

Born in Los Angeles, Rolston studied drawing and painting in his hometown at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis College of Art & Design, as well as in the Bay Area at the San Francisco Art Institute. He also studied illustration, photography, imaging and film at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, where in 2006, he received an honorary doctorate.

While still a student at ArtCenter, Rolston was "discovered" by American artist Andy Warhol, for Warhol's celebrity focused Interview magazine, where he began a successful career in photography.

Rolston’s photographs have been exhibited at museums and institutions. Selected group shows include Beauty CULTure (with Lauren Greenfield, Herb Ritts, Andres Serrano, and Carrie Mae Weems, 2011), The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, California; The Warhol Look: Glamour, Style, Fashion (curated by Mark Francis and Margery King), The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1997); and Fashion and Surrealism, FIT Gallery, New York, 1987 (traveled to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK, 1988). 

Rolston’s works are in the permanent collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, and the National Portrait Gallery (Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture at The Smithsonian, Washington D.C.) among others.

Highlighted Exhibition History

ROLSTON HAS BEEN THE SUBJECT of numerous institutional and gallery exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, which have led to a series of publications authored by the artist. Rolston has shown work at institutions including The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, CA; Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK; Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Rolston has exhibited at galleries including CAMERA WORK, Berlin, DE; Diane Rosenstein Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA; Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and Ralph Pucci International, Los Angeles, CA.

Publications

FIVE MONOGRAPHS HAVE BEEN published of Rolston’s work: 

Big Pictures: A Book of Photographs (1991) is a collection of early photographs published by Bulfinch Press, New York. 

beautyLIGHT: Pictures at a Magazine (2008) is a survey drawn from twenty years of Rolston’s celebrity portrait photographs published by teNeues, Germany. 

Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits (2012) is a concept project centering on portraits of ventriloquial figures, published by Pointed Leaf Press, New York.

Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles (2017) is a retrospective of Rolston's celebrity photography in the 1980s, published by teNeues, Germany.

Matthew Rolston, Art People: The Pageant Portraits (2021) is a lavishly illustrated museum catalog published by Laguna Art Museum in conjunction with their exhibition.

Education

1989 Film Program, ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA

1978 Photography & Imaging, ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA

1976 Drawing & Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA

1975 Drawing & Painting, Otis College of Art & Design, Los Angeles, CA

1974 Drawing & Painting, Chouinard Art Institute, California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, CA 

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2021 Matthew Rolston, Art People: The Pageant Portraits, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA

2018 Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits, Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC

2018 Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles, Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2017 Art People: The Pageant Portraits, Ralph Pucci LA, Los Angeles, CA

2017 Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles, Camera Work Photogalerie, Berlin, Germany

2016 Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits, Camera Work Contemporary Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2014 Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 

1993 Big Pictures, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, IL

1992 Big Pictures, Exposure Gallery, Parco, Tokyo, Japan

1991 Big Pictures, Staley-Wise Gallery, New York, NY

1991 Big Pictures, Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA

1991 Big Pictures, Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1987 Matthew Rolston: Magazine Work, Photographs, Govinda Gallery, Washington, D.C

1982 Matthew Rolston, Portraits, Jennifer Dumas Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1982 New Hollywood Portraiture, FOTO Gallery, New York, NY 

Selected Group Exhibitions

2024 Snap Pop Flash! Joan Agajanian Quinn’s Instamatic Exploits (with Andy Warhol, Ed Moses, Helmut Newton, Don Bachardy and others), Legacy West Media Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2024 Face the Music: The Legacy of Music Photography (with David Bailey, Herb Ritts, Patrick Demarchelier, Phil Stern and others), Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2024 On the Edge: Los Angeles Art, from the Joan and Jack Quinn Family Collection (with Helmut Newton, Kenneth Price, Alexis Smith, Andy Warhol, and others), Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA

2021/2022 Installation (with Varnette Honeywood, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sadie Barnette, and others), curated by Laura Dvorkin and Maynard Monrow, The Bunker Artspace | The Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody, West Palm Beach, FL

2021 On the Edge, Los Angeles Art 1970s-1990s from the Joan and Jack Quinn Family Collection (with Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, and others), Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA

2020 Hollywood Babylon: A Re-Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (with Mike Kelley, Isabelle Albuquerque, Vaginal Davis, and others), curated by Benjamin Lee Ritchie Handler | Nicodim Gallery, and Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2020 Vanity Fair: Hollywood Calling (with Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, Collier Schorr, and others), Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, CA

2018 Greater Than LA (with Larry Bell, Genevieve Gaignard, Lauren Halsey and others), curated by Michael Slenske | Desert Center, Los Angeles, CA

2014 The Editor’s Eye: The Anthony Mazzola Years (with Slim Aarons, Francesco Scavullo, Bill King, and others), Hearst Gallery, Hearst Tower, New York, NY

2014 Joan Quinn Captured, Brand Art Center, Glendale, CA

2013 Joan, Joan, Joan, The Vi Smith Concourse Gallery at John Wayne Airport, Santa Ana, CA

2013 Through the Lens of the Blues Aesthetic: An Evening of Short Films Selected by Kevin Everson, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

2013 The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, SF Shorts: The San Francisco International Festival of Short Films, San Francisco, CA

2011 Mysterious Objects: Portraits of Joan Quinn, Santa Ana College Main Gallery, Santa Ana, CA

2011 Beauty CULTure, Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, CA

2000 The Warhol Look: Glamour, Style, Fashion, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA

1999 The Warhol Look: Glamour, Style, Fashion, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia

1998 The Warhol Look: Glamour, Style, Fashion, Musée de la Mode, Marseilles, France

1997 The Warhol Look: Glamour, Style, Fashion, The Barbican Art Gallery, London, England

1997 The Warhol Look: Glamour, Style, Fashion, The Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

1997 The Warhol Look: Glamour, Style, Fashion, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1989 New Nudes, Govinda Gallery, Washington, D.C.

1988 Fashion and Surrealism, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England

1987 Fashion and Surrealism, FIT Gallery, New York, NY

1987 New Nudes, G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1985 Working In L.A. (with Herb Ritts and Greg Gorman), G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1984 Modern Masters (with Jean Pagliuso, Kim Steele, and Bruce Weber), Delahunty Gallery, Dallas, TX

1984 Modern Masters (with Jean Pagliuso, Kim Steele, and Bruce Weber), Hokin Kauffman Gallery, Chicago, IL 

Selected Public Collections

J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

National Portrait Gallery, The Smithsonian Museum, Washington, D.C. 

Selected Talks and Lectures

2023 Ideation and Communication: A Conversation with Matthew Rolston, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA

2023 Seeing Through Style: The Past, Present and Future of Fashion Imagery, Santa Monica College, Santa Monica, CA

2022 William Mortensen at 125: A Virtual Panel Conversation, with gallerist Stephen Romano, photographic historian Deborah Irmas, author and editor Michael Moynihan, Ph.D., and documentary filmmaker Brian Chidester, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA

2021 In Conversation: Matthew Rolston, with cultural critic Christina Binkley, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA

2021 In Conversation - Matthew Rolston and Michael Slenske: Art for Artist’s Sake, with arts writer and curator Michael Slenske, Soho Warehouse, Los Angeles, CA

2021 In Conversation - Matthew Rolston and Merle Ginsberg: Art for Artist’s Sake, with arts and culture editor Merle Ginsberg, The Britely, West Hollywood, CA

2021 In Conversation: Matthew Rolston, with cultural critic Lindsay Preston Zappas and Getty Curator of Photographs Paul Martineau, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA

2019 Studio to Studio: Hollywood’s Enduring Influence in Contemporary Art, with Academy Museum Exhibitions Curator Jessica Niebel, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Curator Ryan Linkof, and art critic Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, Spring Place, Beverly Hills, CA

2019 The Power of Pleasure: Decoding the Art of Visual Seduction, Santa Monica College, Santa Monica, CA

2019 Is Glamour Art? A Conversation, with Autre Magazine founding editors Oliver Kupper and Summer Bowie, Frieze LA, Paramount Studios, Hollywood, CA

2018 In Conversation- Looking Back: Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine, with KCRW's Frances Anderton, NeueHouse, Hollywood, CA

2018 Art People: A Conversation, with cultural critic Katya Tylevich, Ralph Pucci LA, Los Angeles, CA

2018 Photographic Arts Council of Los Angeles Artist Gallery Talk, Hollywood Royale, Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2018 In Conversation: Matthew Rolston's Hollywood Royale, with New Yorker Magazine contributing writer Christina Binkley, SoHo House West Hollywood, CA

2018 Hollywood Royale: Artist Talk with Matthew Rolston, with gallerist Ute Hartjen, The Battery Club, San Francisco, CA

2018 Iris Night Lecture Series: Hollywood Royale, with Vanity Fair contributing editor Matt Tyrnauer, The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, CA

2018 Glamour, Berlin, and Hollywood: Matthew Rolston, with Lee Kaplan, founder of Arcana Books on the Arts, Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, CA

2018 Hollywood Royale by Matthew Rolston, with Lee Kaplan, founder of Arcana Books on the Arts, ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA

2018 In Conversation: Matthew Rolston's Hollywood Royale, with Wolfsonian curator Cathy Leff, SoHo Beach House, Miami, FL

2018 In Conversation: Matthew Rolston's Hollywood Royale, with author and Warhol collaborator Pat Hackett, SoHo House New York, NY

2017 In Conversation: Matthew Rolston's Hollywood Royale, with cultural critic Nadia Says, SoHo House Berlin, Germany

2014 The Rise of the Fashion Film, with New Yorker Magazine contributing writer Christina Binkley, ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA

2011 Iris Night Lecture Series: Matthew Rolston on "Beauty CULTure", with journalist Merle Ginsberg, The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, CA

2009 beautyLIGHT by Matthew Rolston, with journalist Merle Ginsberg, ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA