“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.”
From
time to time I go through works of many women artists, I don’t do that
intentionally but they catch my eye more than their male contemporaries. I
think there’s so much more happening in the canvas with all the told and untold
stories that may or may not relate but for the most part, it’s the former that
happens where ever they come from. I think there’s an invisible thread, a link
that runs through the lives of the likes of us that coincide at some point.
There lies a universal phenomenon beneath each surface.
Cecily
Brown was born in London in 1969. A graduate from the Slade School of Fine
Art, Brown moved to New York from London in 1999. She was just 29 when she made
it enormous in the International Art scene; the Allbright-Knox, the Tate, the
Whitney Museum, the Rubell Collection, the Broad Museum all made major acquisitions
of Brown’s earlier works, certainly an incredible achievement for a young
artist of her time. She is already in the echelons of the expensive female
artists in the world.
Cecily Brown
Brown
addresses herself as a figurative painter. As a child, she used to sneak into
painting books of Francis Bacon and George Grosz, the German painter (known for
his Butcher Shop paintings) and she liked the horror and scariness that it
imparted more than anything else. Brown needs a body as a vehicle to talk about
being alive and to understand the world else she feels that there remains
nothing but smears of paint. She feels concerned with completed figures and finds
the need to break it down. The cacophony of glaring, grimacing and fragmented
figures as subjects, some evident, some loosely drawn and some hidden, all the
same unmistakeably figurative like some elusive short-hand Brown’s adept at, reduced
to complexions and sometimes veiled expressions and a whole kaleidoscope of
fleshy pinks, oranges, browns, purples and grey fill up her canvas. There’s a
tug and pull of painterly effect and figurative content amid the brimming human
presence. Her aesthetic is characterized by sexual imagery
and abstract expressionistic gestural style.
Brown
likes it when nothing’s pinned down or determined, to be in a state of flux, in
the process of becoming which I think is quite a wonderful place to be just as
we might say that the journey is much more enjoyable than reaching the destination.
She’s not into pure abstraction like later Rothko or Barnett Newman as she
herself mentions. She conjures up images and is influenced by Masters like Rubens,
Poussin, Goya, Titian, Degas, Miro, Gorky, Joan Mitchell and William de
Kooning, the abstract expressionist. Brown takes in from history paintings and
places it in her own aura of the canvas where she strips them of their past and
breathes into them a new lease of life unconnected to where they belonged. The Young Spartans Exercising and La Coiffure (Combing the Hair) of Degas influenced Brown immensely particularly
with the fleshy tones and figures in the former and the inherent menace in the
latter which were brought to her notice by Bacon, she mentions.
Be Nice to the Big Blue Sea - 2013
Borrowing the names of classic
novels, plays, and Hollywood films such as The Fugitive Kind, The
Bedtime Story, Those are pearls that were his eyes, High Society, or The Pajama Game, she utilizes it to her
best and makes her titles quite fascinating.
Sexuality, eroticism and attraction are important
themes in her works which Brown explores through the churning of embracing couples
pressing against one another forming and dissolving into a gorgeous watery
landscape, the palette is luscious and fleshy, the subject is romantic and athletic
in execution but refined all the same. Figures
in a Landscape 1 and Figures in a
landscape 2 are sister-paintings both in prestigious collections. These were
two of the exceptionally famous works that fetched her an incredible sum to
begin with.
Figures in a Landscape 1
Cecily Brown’s Bunny painting
reminds me of Paula Rego’s earlier bunny paintings as well and Rego happens to
be one of my favourites. What I find appealing in Brown’s canvases are the
fleshy tones and the painterly texture that extends all through her wide
canvas. Her story-telling has a signature style which she instills from a series
of source images that are laid out in her studio and she works from them
without directly holding, looking and drawing from it as she has become an
adept after years of working from images, some are repeated too.
Where, when, how often and with whom?
One needs to be physical and performative at a bigger scale
like Brown’s. They are incredibly ambitious and fill up entire walls.
All the nightmares came today
Amidst all the cacophony nowadays
people wear headphones and weave in and out not realizing that they are going
to bump in on someone at the last instant. They are totally unaware. They are
so engrossed in the gadgets. The phone has brought about the death of society
in a way. The figures in the paintings are unaware of the other though they are
in the same physical space but they are not connected. This disconnectedness in
today’s society is the tipping point.
Agreeing
on those terms, I feel we are totally engrossed in our petite compartments that
we are no longer bothered about what’s happening at the larger picture. If only we
took some time to pause and look around, we would notice where we are heading.
*Burkini - a portmanteau
of burqa and bikini - a woman's swimsuit that covers the
entire body, leaving only the hands, feet, and face exposed. A type of modesty
swimsuit for women.
images: Artspace, Pinterest, Sotheby's, Artnews.
Fascinating read and art. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Deepakji! Cecily Brown is a fascinating artist.
DeleteVery interesting!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Sonia! Cecily Brown’s works are amazing and interesting with layers upon layers of intriguing stories!😊
Delete