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Lot Essay
“The place I'm interested in is where the mind goes when it's trying to make up for what isn't there.” -Cecily Brown
A riot of color, fully loaded paint strokes and luscious impasto are the hallmarks of a powerful Cecily Brown work. Her imagery is always a means to an end, and the end is always pure, unadulterated painting. Art historian Dore Ashton has written, “She is a painter who makes journeys and tells herself stories—but in her own language: the language of painting ... For a painter, a painting is a place. The whole meaning of illusion lies there, in creating the reality of a place within which the regard of the viewer is absorbed and rendered other” (D. Ashton, Cecily Brown, New York, 2008, p. 20).
Figures in a Garden #1, a richly colored painting from 2004, boasts a lively gestural motif. Brown embraces the qualities that are unique to oil painting alone, rejoicing in its inherent tactility, and the way it can reflect every subtle nuance of the artist’s touch. She uses the full potential of the palette, and demonstrates an intimate understanding of color by juxtaposing warm and cool tones in order to create depth on a flat picture plane. The beguiling quality of the paintwork always takes precedence over any obvious imagery, whether she is hinting at landscape or figurative elements; any motif that Brown holds in her mind while she paints remains deliberately coy. Brown’s images suggest themselves as the painting emerges, stroke by stroke: “My process is really quite organic and starting a painting is one of the best parts for me. I always start in quite a loose and free way. I often put down one ground color to begin with and then play off that. For the first day or two, everything moves very quickly... then there's often this very protracted middle period of moving things around, changing things, editing” (C. Brown quoted in “Cecily Brown: I Take Things Too Far when Painting,” The Observer, 20 Sept 2009).
Figures in a Garden #1 is at once reminiscent of a landscape with its flora bursting forth from the composition’s center, and a vibrant sky in its upper background. Upon closer examination, two embracing figures seem to emerge from near center. As Brown has explained, “I never want to be saying ‘this is the way it is.’ It is all about ambiguity, and keeping things up in the air. I want the imagery to almost be in a state of flux. In the end it does not matter that much what it is of, you will bring your own story to it. It matters to me while I’m painting it, but I really want the paintings to have a life of their own” (C. Brown, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZm6jS3rkBE [accessed 8 April 2016]).
Having studied at the Slade in London, Brown moved to New York in the early 1990s, removing herself from the emergent Young British Artist scene, with which she felt her paintings had little in common despite respecting many of the works it produced. Instead, Brown took up the mantle of the Abstract Expressionists who had so defined the New York art scene almost half a century earlier, subverting it to her own purposes. She has taken the machismo associated with that movement as well as the eschewal of figuration and twisted them around on themselves, allowing her to critique that largely masculine movement; at the same time, she has permitted herself the free indulgence of the sensual enjoyment of painting itself, a pleasure that she shares with her American predecessors. As Eleanor Heartney has noted, “Whatever one thinks of her subject matter, one thing can’t be denied: Brown can paint. Her canvases recall the slashing brushstrokes of de Kooning, the meaty flesh of Soutine and the dissolving forms of Francis Bacon” (E. Heartney, “Cecily Brown: High Society at Deitch Projects,” Art in America, June 1998, p. 131). Figures in a Garden #1 indeed highlights the various elements Brown strategically borrows from her modern master predecessors. The vigorously worked surface of this complex and compelling painting, with its wildly varied palette and sweeping intuitive line, celebrates Brown’s signature gestural approach and her capacity to mesmerize and bedazzle viewers with the mercurial nature of her subjects.
A riot of color, fully loaded paint strokes and luscious impasto are the hallmarks of a powerful Cecily Brown work. Her imagery is always a means to an end, and the end is always pure, unadulterated painting. Art historian Dore Ashton has written, “She is a painter who makes journeys and tells herself stories—but in her own language: the language of painting ... For a painter, a painting is a place. The whole meaning of illusion lies there, in creating the reality of a place within which the regard of the viewer is absorbed and rendered other” (D. Ashton, Cecily Brown, New York, 2008, p. 20).
Figures in a Garden #1, a richly colored painting from 2004, boasts a lively gestural motif. Brown embraces the qualities that are unique to oil painting alone, rejoicing in its inherent tactility, and the way it can reflect every subtle nuance of the artist’s touch. She uses the full potential of the palette, and demonstrates an intimate understanding of color by juxtaposing warm and cool tones in order to create depth on a flat picture plane. The beguiling quality of the paintwork always takes precedence over any obvious imagery, whether she is hinting at landscape or figurative elements; any motif that Brown holds in her mind while she paints remains deliberately coy. Brown’s images suggest themselves as the painting emerges, stroke by stroke: “My process is really quite organic and starting a painting is one of the best parts for me. I always start in quite a loose and free way. I often put down one ground color to begin with and then play off that. For the first day or two, everything moves very quickly... then there's often this very protracted middle period of moving things around, changing things, editing” (C. Brown quoted in “Cecily Brown: I Take Things Too Far when Painting,” The Observer, 20 Sept 2009).
Figures in a Garden #1 is at once reminiscent of a landscape with its flora bursting forth from the composition’s center, and a vibrant sky in its upper background. Upon closer examination, two embracing figures seem to emerge from near center. As Brown has explained, “I never want to be saying ‘this is the way it is.’ It is all about ambiguity, and keeping things up in the air. I want the imagery to almost be in a state of flux. In the end it does not matter that much what it is of, you will bring your own story to it. It matters to me while I’m painting it, but I really want the paintings to have a life of their own” (C. Brown, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZm6jS3rkBE [accessed 8 April 2016]).
Having studied at the Slade in London, Brown moved to New York in the early 1990s, removing herself from the emergent Young British Artist scene, with which she felt her paintings had little in common despite respecting many of the works it produced. Instead, Brown took up the mantle of the Abstract Expressionists who had so defined the New York art scene almost half a century earlier, subverting it to her own purposes. She has taken the machismo associated with that movement as well as the eschewal of figuration and twisted them around on themselves, allowing her to critique that largely masculine movement; at the same time, she has permitted herself the free indulgence of the sensual enjoyment of painting itself, a pleasure that she shares with her American predecessors. As Eleanor Heartney has noted, “Whatever one thinks of her subject matter, one thing can’t be denied: Brown can paint. Her canvases recall the slashing brushstrokes of de Kooning, the meaty flesh of Soutine and the dissolving forms of Francis Bacon” (E. Heartney, “Cecily Brown: High Society at Deitch Projects,” Art in America, June 1998, p. 131). Figures in a Garden #1 indeed highlights the various elements Brown strategically borrows from her modern master predecessors. The vigorously worked surface of this complex and compelling painting, with its wildly varied palette and sweeping intuitive line, celebrates Brown’s signature gestural approach and her capacity to mesmerize and bedazzle viewers with the mercurial nature of her subjects.