Cecily Brown

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Cecily Brown
Cecily Brown, 2012
Born1969 (age 54–55)
London, England
Alma mater
StyleFigurative art
Abstract art
SpouseNicolai Ouroussoff

Cecily Brown (born 1969) is a British painter.[1] Her style displays the influence of a variety of contemporary painters, from Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon[2] and Joan Mitchell, to Old Masters like Rubens, Poussin and Goya.[3][4] Brown lives and works in New York.[5][6]

Personal life[edit]

Brown was born to novelist Shena Mackay and art critic David Sylvester[7] and raised in England. Prior to her 1994 move to New York City, Brown resided in New York as an exchange student from the Slade School of Art in 1992. From the age of three Brown wanted to be an artist; she was supported in this ambition by her family, notably by her grandmother and two of her uncles who were also artists.[8] Brown is married to architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff; they have one daughter.[9]

Since 2014, Brown has been serving on the board of directors of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA).[10]

Education[edit]

Brown earned a B-TEC Diploma in Art and Design from the Epsom School of Art, Surrey, England (1985–87) (now part of the University for the Creative Arts), took drawing and printmaking classes at Morley College, London (1987–89), and received a BA degree in Fine Arts from the Slade School of Art, London (1989–93).[11] During her studies she worked as a waitress and, later, in an animation studio. In addition to painting, Brown also studied printmaking and draftsmanship. She earned First Class Honours at the Slade and was the first-prize recipient in the National Competition for British Art Students.[2]

Career[edit]

Brown left London to sign on to the Gagosian Gallery in New York City. She became known to the art world in the late 1990s through an exhibition of abstracted paintings of rabbits. The rabbits in the works are frolicking in bacchanalian landscapes.[12] In 1995, the art world took notice of her work when she displayed Four Letter Heaven at the Telluride Film Festival; it was shown in the United States as well as Europe.[13] The films consist of sexual and pornographic themes, which she explores in the majority of her work.[13] In 2000, she was photographed for Vanity Fair lying in front of one of her paintings, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a dollar sign.[14]

Brown maintained a studio in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan,[5] then in 2011, she worked from a studio at a former office near Union Square.

Work[edit]

Painting[edit]

Service de Luxe (1999) at the Rubell Museum DC in 2022

Brown uses drawing as a prerequisite to guide her work. Through the use of repetition, Brown captures images that both attract and confound her.  Though her drawings are not as exhibited as her paintings, both art mediums contain similar aspects in showcasing her erotic view of art through subject matter. Brown states, “I want to make forms that are either just dissolving or in the process of just becoming something and to play with the relationship between the eye and the brain.”[12]

Brown's paintings combine figuration and utter abstraction while exploring the power relationship between male and female. Expanding the tradition of abstract expressionism, she has become known for a painting style suggestive of abstract and abstract expressionist painters such as Willem de Kooning and Oskar Kokoschka.[15] Brown has minimal anxiety about the art media she uses; she said in an interview with Lari Pittman that "As someone who works with traditional materials, I've always had little anxiety that the medium isn't contemporary enough, that the work could have been made at almost any time." In her interview with Pittman she discussed how she defines 'sexy' and 'sexual' in her work: "I suppose you could say that the sexual is in every painting, whether there is an overt subject or not. The tension within the painting, whatever the subject, is the desired outcome. The sexy would be the girl's lipstick smile or the shoe--the physical object from the three-dimensional world placed within the painting." When she begins a painting, she generally doesn't have an exact idea of what she is trying to achieve, but she lets the final painting reveal itself as she works.[16] Whilst painting she likes to let the paintings develop and change drastically, because she believes the surprise makes her work more interesting.[17] Brown says, "All the paintings I'm working on have more or less the same impetus; the same thoughts are driving them. I like there to be an argument within a painting."[18] Sexuality and attraction are important themes in her work, which she explores through semi-figurative and abstract means.[15] The way she handles paint within her work, becomes the subject matter itself by engulfing her figures within the paint or to use it to add a sense of humor to her sexual imagery.[13] The main characteristic of Brown's paintings is her use of motion, expressive mark-making and many mixtures of color throughout her pieces. She also constantly changes palettes, so her work consistently shifts over time.[18] Her paintings also recall the works of Philip Guston and the Bay Area Figurative School of the 1950s and 1960s. Brown often titles her paintings after classic Hollywood films and musicals, such as The Pyjama Game, The Bedtime Story and The Fugitive Kind. Brown said in an interview that "One of the main things I would like my work to do is to reveal itself slowly, continuously and for you never to feel that you're really finished looking at something." She also said in another interview that she asks herself as she works, "How can I paint the equivalent of what it's like to move through space, to move through the world, to be in a room, in a park, on the street?" [18] In 2013, Brown based a series of paintings on a photograph of a large group of nude women that appeared on the British release of a 1968 Jimi Hendrix album Electric Ladyland.[15]

The sexuality and eroticism of Brown's depictions of expressive figures and nudes are echoed in rich colours, luscious paint handling, and animated brushwork; her work combines representational and abstract elements. In her interview with Lari Pittman she discussed how she defines 'sexy' and 'sexual' in her work. Brown said, "I suppose you could say that the sexual is in every painting, whether there is an overt subject or not. The tension within the painting, whatever the subject, is the desired outcome. The sexy would be the girl's lipstick smile or the shoe--the physical object from the three-dimensional world placed within the painting."[16] Her tactile technique stands out among contemporaries and links her to the art movement Abstract Expressionism. However, self-conscious of her connection with artists such as Willem de Kooning and Lucian Freud, Brown often interjects fresh humor or irony by titling her paintings after famous musicals and films. She has been grouped with leading female contemporary painters, including Charline von Heyl, Jacqueline Humphries, Laura Owens, Jutta Koether, Amy Sillman, and Emily Sundblad.[19]

Cecily Brown works using a non-linear approach. Brown experiments with this approach by working with multiple canvases at one time. Working in large groups allows Brown to explore new compositional ideas while continually being spontaneous. Brown describes her process as "organic".[20] She often spends multiple days on works, and will work on up to 20 works at a time, allowing layers of paint to dry between applications.[21]

In 1997, Brown created Untitled, a permanent, site-specific installation for the group exhibition Vertical Paintings at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Arts Center (now MoMA PS1).[22]

In the media[edit]

In the February 2000 edition of Vanity Fair, Brown, along with fellow artists Inka Essenhigh, John Currin and others, appeared in photographs taken by Todd Eberle. A photograph that appeared in The New Yorker made showed Brown from the back as she stood, cigarette in hand, studying one of her paintings.[23]

Brown presided in 2004, along with other artists such as Laura Owens and Elizabeth Peyton, over a Democratic Party fund-raising event, Art Works for Hard Money, in Los Angeles.[24]

Charity work[edit]

In 2020 Brown donated her work Wanton Boy to amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, to help fund their temporary COVID-19 research initiative. The painting sold for $250,000 in a virtual auction conducted in July by Christie's, which also included donated works from artists such as Eddie Martinez and Dana Schutz.[25][26]

Critical reception[edit]

Brown has received a lot of critical attention for powerful, athletically sized canvases and bold brushwork. The assertiveness of her paintings has often been compared to Abstract Expressionist works which, during their time, were linked to a fierce masculinity. As a female artist working in this vein, Brown's works have been seen as confronting both this tradition and gendered assumptions about art.

However, some recent critics have taken a different stance. In a 2011 review for The Guardian, art critic Adrian Searle rejected the dynamic and assertive surfaces of Brown's art and wrote: "What's really missing in her art is character, and for all the hectic painting, a sense of necessity." Likewise, in 2013, Leah Ollman wrote a review of a Gagosian Gallery show for The LA Times, in which she observed: "Instead of powerful and passionate, her voice comes across as detached. The volume is turned up, but the verve is on low."[27] Roberta Smith, in The New York Times, called a Gagosian exhibition it reviewed in 2000 "lackluster" and suggested that Brown's "career is ahead of her artistic development."[28] Smith subsequently wrote a largely positive review of Brown's work in an article titled "I Was Wrong About Cecily Brown".[29]

Art market[edit]

Cecily set an early auction record when her oil painting Sick Leaves sold for 2.2 million dollars at a Christie's auction in March 2017.[30] Shortly after, Suddenly Last Summer (1999), originally estimated at $1.8 to $2.5 million, fetched $6.8 million at a 2018 Sotheby's auction in New York.[31]

Exhibitions[edit]

Brown has staged many solo shows and exhibitions in the United States, United Kingdom, and internationally. Her notable solo shows include Spectacle (1997), Deitch Projects, New York;[32] Directions - Cecily Brown (2002), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.;[33] Cecily Brown (2004), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid;[34] Cecily Brown: Rehearsal (2016), Drawing Center, New York;[35] If Paradise Were Half as Nice (2018-2019), originating at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo;[36] Cecily Brown (2020), Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire,[37] and Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid (2023) Metropolitan Museum of Art.[38][39]

She has also participated in many group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial (2004).[40]

Notable works in public collections[edit]

Further reading[edit]

  • Dore Ashton, Cecily Brown, Rizzoli, New York, 2008. ISBN 978-0847830923
  • Cecily Brown: Rehearsal, The Drawing Center's Drawing Papers, Volume 128, October 5, 2016.
  • Jason Rosenfeld, "Interview with Cecily Brown," The Brooklyn Rail, December 2017/January 2018.
  • Courtney J. Martin, Jason Rosenfeld, Francine Prose, Cecily Brown, Phaidon, London, 2020. ISBN 978-1838662233

References[edit]

  1. ^ Great Women Artists. Phaidon Press. 2019. p. 78. ISBN 978-0714878775.
  2. ^ a b Scott, Sue (2013). "Cecily Brown" in The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium, 31. Munich: Prestel. ISBN 978-3-7913-4759-2.
  3. ^ "Cecily Brown". Artspace.
  4. ^ Holzwarth, Hans W. (2009). 100 Contemporary Artists A-Z (Taschen's 25th anniversary special ed.). Köln: Taschen. p. 74. ISBN 978-3-8365-1490-3.
  5. ^ a b Karen Wright (29 November 2013), In the studio: Cecily Brown, Painter The Independent.
  6. ^ "Cecily Brown's First Ever Solo Exhibition in the Netherlands at GEM Museum of Contemporary Art". Artdaily.org. 31 December 2010. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  7. ^ http://www.artcritical.com/DavidCohen/SUN89.htm Archived 8 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine review. Retrieved 1 June 2007
  8. ^ Enright, Robert (February 2005). "Paint Whisperer: An Interview with Cecily Brown". Border Crossings. 24 (1): 36–49. Retrieved 26 October 2016.[permanent dead link]
  9. ^ Langmuir, Molly (12 November 2014). "THE 12 MOST DARING, UNEXPECTED, AND EXCITING WOMEN IN ART NOW". Elle. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  10. ^ Foundation for Contemporary Arts Announces 2014 John Cage Award Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), press release of 15 January 2014.
  11. ^ "Cecily Brown". Blouin ArtInfo. Archived from the original on 29 January 2015. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  12. ^ a b Cecily Brown; Claire Gilman; David Salle (2016). Cecily Brown - Rehearsal. Drawing Center. ISBN 9780942324990. OCLC 975241389.
  13. ^ a b c Grant, Catherine M. (2018). "Brown, Cecily". Oxford Art Online. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T096729.
  14. ^ Nairne, Eleanor (19 October 2023) "At the Met." London Review of Books. Page 21.
  15. ^ a b c Small, Rachel (March 2015). "CECILY BROWN SHOWS HER WOMEN UPTOWN". Interview. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  16. ^ a b Rolf Lauter (19 August 2014), Cecily Brown & Rolf Lauter: Interview, KUNSTHALLE MANNHEIM 2005, archived from the original on 19 December 2021, retrieved 11 March 2017
  17. ^ Louisiana Channel (3 November 2015), Cecily Brown Interview: Take No Prisoners, archived from the original on 19 December 2021, retrieved 11 March 2017
  18. ^ a b c Brown, Cecily (2003). Cecily Brown. Gagosian Gallery. ISBN 1880154900. OCLC 53164963.
  19. ^ Diane Solway (19 August 2013), Charline von Heyl: In the Abstract Archived 31 October 2016 at the Wayback Machine W.
  20. ^ Lewis, Perri (20 September 2009). "Cecily Brown: I take things too far when painting". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  21. ^ Wright, Karen (29 November 2013). "In the studio: Cecily Brown, Painter". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  22. ^ a b "Artist Interventions". MoMA PS1. Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 9 August 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  23. ^ Roberta Smith (5 July 2000), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman; Glossy Images That Both Mimic and Mock Male Sexuaility The New York Times.
  24. ^ Alex Williams (4 July 2004), Cutting Edge In the Arts Now Is Joining a PAC The New York Times.
  25. ^ Riegelhaupt, Rebecca (12 June 2020). "Release: Christie's to Offer Works Created During Quarantine to Benefit amfAR's Fund to Fight COVID-19". Christies. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  26. ^ "From the Studio". Innovations. amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research: 14. October 2020.
  27. ^ Ollman, Leah (26 September 2013). "Review: Cecily Brown's paintings do not disturb". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  28. ^ Smith, Roberta (21 January 2000). "ART IN REVIEW; Cecily Brown". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  29. ^ Smith, Roberta (13 April 2023). "I Was Wrong About Cecily Brown". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  30. ^ "Doig, Rothko and Dubuffet lead on a night of records in London". Christies.com. 7 March 2017. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  31. ^ Sarah P. Hanson (May 17, 2018), Kerry James Marshall sets $21m record for a living African American artist at Sotheby's The Art Newspaper.
  32. ^ "Cecily Brown: Spectacle". Deitch Project Archives. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  33. ^ "Directions - Cecily Brown". Hirshhorn. Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on 18 August 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  34. ^ "Cecily Brown". Museo Reina Sofia. Archived from the original on 26 May 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  35. ^ "Rehearsal". Drawing Center. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  36. ^ "If Paradise Were Half as Nice". Instituto Tomie Ohtake. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  37. ^ "Cecily Brown at Blenheim Palace". Blenheim Art Foundation. Archived from the original on 16 May 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  38. ^ "The Metropolitan Museum of Art". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 25 March 2023.
  39. ^ Magazine, Carol Kino | Photography by Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ (2 March 2023). "Cecily Brown's Fearless Approach to Painting". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 25 March 2023.
  40. ^ "Whitney Biennial 2004". Whitney. Whitney Museum. Archived from the original on 6 October 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  41. ^ "Four Letter Heaven (Animation Cells)". MoMA. Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 3 December 2021. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  42. ^ "Untitled". MMK. Museum für Moderne Kunst. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  43. ^ "Broken Lullaby". DAM. Denver Art Museum. Archived from the original on 25 January 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  44. ^ "Father of the Bride". BuffaloAKG. Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  45. ^ a b "Cecily Brown". Rubell Museum. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  46. ^ "Tender Night". The Broad. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  47. ^ "Trouble in Paradise". Tate. Archived from the original on 11 August 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  48. ^ "Puttin' on the Ritz". Guggenheim. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Archived from the original on 21 May 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  49. ^ "Hoodlum". Hirshhorn. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  50. ^ "Black Painting I". The Broad. Archived from the original on 23 July 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  51. ^ "Black Painting 2". Whitney. Whitney Museum. Archived from the original on 5 July 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  52. ^ "Girl on a Swing". NGA. National Gallery of Art. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  53. ^ "Girl on a Swing #2". The Broad. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  54. ^ "Red Suzannah". SFMoMA. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  55. ^ "Half-Bind". Des Moines Art Center. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  56. ^ "Skulldiver III (Flightmask)". MFA. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  57. ^ "Oh, Marie!". Des Moines Art Center. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  58. ^ "Oh, Marie!". MFA. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  59. ^ "Fair of Face, Full of Woe". MetMuseum. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 16 July 2020. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  60. ^ "All of Your Troubles Come from Yourself". Whitney. Whitney Museum. Archived from the original on 5 July 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  61. ^ "Untitled". MoMA. Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 3 December 2021. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  62. ^ Hill, Kathryn (20 January 2022). "New Acquisition: Cecily Brown". GeorgiaMuseum. University of Georgia. Archived from the original on 19 April 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  63. ^ "Cecily Brown". Louisiana. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  64. ^ "Trump of the Vanities II". Brooklyn Museum. Archived from the original on 24 November 2022. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  65. ^ "The Hound with the Horses' Hooves". Yale Center for British Art. Yale University. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.

External links[edit]

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