Sources
https://www.theartstory.org/artist-brown-cecily.htm
Ryan, Zoë. “Cecily Brown: Gagosian Gallery, New York.” MAKE Magazine, no. 87, Mar. 2000, p. 37. EBSCOhost, acproxy.ac.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aft&AN=505856995&site=ehost-live.
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/cecily-brown
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/now-i-can-steal-from-myself-as-much-as-from-other-artists-an-interview-with-cecily-brown/[1]
http://cfa-berlin.de/artists/26981/cecily-brown/news/
https://hammer.ucla.edu/blog/2018/04/where-are-they-now-cecily-brown-in-santa-barbara/
Citations
Cecily Brown has a studio In New York that overlooks Union Square. It is full of light and houses many of her works.[1]
- ^ a b "An interview with Cecily Brown". Apollo Magazine. 2018-11-03. Retrieved 2019-02-28.
SOURCES
https://www.theartstory.org/artist-brown-cecily.htm-
- Left london to sign on to the Gagoisan in NYC
- “Daughter of British novelist, Shena Mackay, and influential art critic and curator, David Sylvester”
Ryan, Zoë. “Cecily Brown: Gagosian Gallery, New York.” MAKE Magazine, no. 87, Mar. 2000, p. 37. EBSCOhost, acproxy.ac.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aft&AN=505856995&site=ehost-live.
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/cecily-brown
- Uses Abstract Expressionism as a basis
- Experimented with animation like with “Four Letter Heaven” in 1995
- Later focused more on human figures
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/now-i-can-steal-from-myself-as-much-as-from-other-artists-an-interview-with-cecily-brown/
- Starts several canvases at a time
- 6 months as an exchange student in NY in 1992, returned after graduating Slade in 1994
http://cfa-berlin.de/artists/26981/cecily-brown/news/
https://hammer.ucla.edu/blog/2018/04/where-are-they-now-cecily-brown-in-santa-barbara/
- Characteristic to Brown’s canvas are jarring mixtures of color, ranging from earthy hues to flushed flesh tones that are combined in passages of energetic and bold strokes of the brush. Bodies in motion being the main subject of Brown’s work, her depictions of activities range from sexual encounters to the daily routine of combing one's own hair.
Book- Cecily Brown Rehearsal
- Became known to the art world in the late 1990’s, due to a painting exhibition of rabbits she abstracted. The rabbits in the works are frolicking in bacchanalian landscapes.
- She creates works that are both super detailed and realistic as well as abstractions.
- For Brown, drawing must be understood therefore as a unique inquiry, one that serves a necessary function within her aesthetic approach as a whole.
- Sometimes, Brown works for poor reproductions and will forgo wearing glasses because she enjoys the abstracted vision that results.
Cecily Brown (born 1969) is a British painter. She is the daughter of novelist Shena Mackay and art critic David Sylvester.[6] Her style displays the influence of a variety of painters, from Francisco de Goya, Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon[1] and Joan Mitchell, to Old Masters like Rubens and Poussin, yet her works also present a distinctly female viewpoint.[2][3] Brown currently lives and works in New York City.[4][5]
Personal life
Brown was born and raised in England before moving to New York City in 1994. Prior to moving to New York city, Brown resided in New York as an exchange student from the Slade School of Art in 1992 . Since she was three years old she had always wanted to be artist and was supported by her family. This support system came from her grandmother and two of her uncles who were also artists.[36] Brown is married to architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff; they have one daughter, Celeste.[37]
Since 2014, Brown has been serving on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA).[38]
Education
Brown earned a B-TEC Diploma in Art and Design from the Epsom School of Art, Surrey, England (1985–87) (now 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).[7] 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 Slade and was the first-prize recipient in the National Competition for British Art Students.[1]
Career
Brown left London to sign on to the Gagoisan in New York City. She became known to the art world in the late 1990’s, due to a painting exhibition of abstracted rabbits. The rabbits in the works are frolicking in bacchanalian landscapes. [cite needed] In 1995, the art world took notice of her work when she displayed Four Letter Heaven at Telluride Film Festival, which was shown in the United States as well as Europe.[9] The films consist of sexual and pornographic themes which she explores in the majority of work.[9] Brown maintained a studio in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan[4], then in 2011, she worked from a studio at a former office near Union Square.
Work
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.” (need to cite “Rehearsal”)
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 her painting style suggestive of abstract and abstract expressionist painters such as de Kooning and Oskar Kokoschka.[10] Brown has minimal anxiety when it come to medium, she said in an interview with Lari Pittman, “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.” [cite needed- book CB]. 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.[11] While painting, she likes to let the paintings develop and change drastically because she believes the surprise makes her work more interesting.[12] 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.” [cite- book CB] Sexuality and attraction are important themes in her work, which she explores through semi-figurative and abstract means.[10] 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.[9] The main characteristics of Brown’s paintings is her use of many mixtures of color, expressive mark making and motion throughout her pieces. She also is constantly changing palettes, so her work consistently shifts over time. [ cite- book CB] 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?” [cite- book CB]. 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.[10]
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.” [ cite- book CB] 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.[13]
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."[14] 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.[15]
Some of her work includes:
Sky Towers and Bridal Bowers, Oil on Linen, 65’’ x 43’’, 2016 [16]
Those are pearls that were his eyes, Oil on Aluminum, 43 in x 53 in, 2016[16]
Untitled (After Gericault), Charcoal and watercolor, 20 in x 26 in, 2016[16]
Untitled (Banquet), Oil on Linen, 109 in x 171 in, 2012[16]
Untitled (Blood Thicker Than Mud),Oil on Linen, 109 in x 171 in, 2012[16]
Dreamboat, Oil on Linen, 55 in x 77 in, 2011[16]
Be Nice to the Big Blue Sea, Oil on Linen, 109 in x 107 in, 2012[16]
The Green, Green Grass of Home, Oil on Linen, 97 in x 151 in, 2010[16]
Untitled (The Beautiful and Damned), Oil on Linen, 109 in x 171 in, 2013[16]
Luck Just Kissed You Hello, Oil on Linen, 67 in x 65 in, 2013[16]
The Girl and Goat, Oil on Linen, 97 in x 89 in, 2013–2014[16]
No You for Me, Oil on Linen, 83 in x 67 in, 2013[16]
Combing the Hair (Cote d'Azur), Oil on Linen, 109 in x 113 in, 2013[16]
Footsie, LIthographin 10 colours on Somerset textured white paper, 43 ¾ in x 33 ½ in, 2000, Edition of 33[16]
Jimmy Jimmy, Oil on Linen, 65 in x 67 in, 2014[16]
Untitled (Paradise), Monotype in watercolor, pencil and pastel on Lanaquarelle paper, 47 ½ in 71 ¾ in, 2015[16]
Figures in a Landscape 1, Oil on Linen, 90 in x 100 in, 2001[16]
Untitled (Vanity), Oil on Linen, 77 in x 55 in, 2005[16]
Sunset Motel, Oil on Linen, 41 in x 109 in, 2015[16]
Aujourd'hui Rose, 4 colour lithograph, 39 in 29 in, 2005[16]
The Sleep Around and the Lost and Found, Oil on Canvas, 97 in x 103 in, 2014[16]
Is it nice in you snowstorm?, Oil on Linen, 17 in 12 ½ in, 2014[16]
The Young and the Restless, Oil on Linen, 115 in x 109 in, 2014[16]
We Think the Same Things at the Same Time, Oil on canvas, 43 in x 65 in, 2014[16]
Combing the Hair (Outside), Oil on Canvas, 83 in x 67 in, 2014[16]
Stuck in the Middle With You, Oil on Linen, 43 in x 31 in, 2015[16]
Color Etching with Brick Wall, 7-color etching with aquatint, 2003, Editions 5 PPs, 1 BAT, 4 HCs of 28 + 4AP[16]
Untitled (#82), Oil on Linen, 17 in x 12 ½ in, 2008[16]
Bye Baby Bunting, Oil on Linen, 65 in x 43 in, 2008[16]
Untitled(#68), Oil on Linen, 12 ½ in 17 in, 2008[16]
Untitled (#84), Oil on Linen, 17 x 12 ½ in, 2008[16]
Study for Sarn Mere 2, Oil on Linen, 85 in x 89 in, 2008[16]
Untitled (#53), Oil on Linen, 17 in x 12 in, 2007[16]
Indian Tourist, Oil on Linen, 97 in x 89 in, 2008[16]
Untitled (#92), Oil on Linen, 17 in x 12 ½ in, 2008[16]
Untitled (#90), Oil on Linen, 12 ½ in x 17 in, 2008[16]
New Face in Hell, Oil on Linen, 97 in x 89 in, 2008[16]
Untitled (#83), Oil on Linen, 17 in x 12 ½ in, 2008[16]
Skulldiver 3 (Flightmask), Oil on Linen, 85 in x 89 in, 2006[16]
Memento Mori 1, Oil on Linen, 97 in x 103 in, 2006–2008[16]
Other works
In 1997, Brown created Untitled, a permanent, site-specific installation for the group exhibition Vertical Paintings at P.S. 1.[17]
To see more paintings by Brown click here[18]
In the media
In the February 2000 edition of Vanity Fair, Brown, along with fellow artists Inka Essenhigh, John Currin and others, appeared in full-color 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.[19]
In 2004, Brown presided, along with other artists such as Laura Owens and Elizabeth Peyton, over a Democratic fund-raising event, Art Works for Hard Money, in Los Angeles.[20]
Critical reception
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. Roberta Smith, in The New York Times, called a Gagosian exhibit it reviewed in 2000 "lackluster" and suggested that Brown's "career is ahead of her artistic development."[21] 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."[22]
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions include:[23]
"Directions: Cecily Brown," Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2002)
MACRO, Rome (2003)
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2004)[24]
Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (2005)
Kunsthalle Mannheim (2005–06); Des Moines Art Center, Iowa (2006)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2006–07)[25]
Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2009)[26]
"Based on a True Story," GEM, Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hague (2010, travelled to Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover)
Essl Museum, Cecily Brown, Gagosian Gallery, Rome, 2011[16]
Cecily Brown, Gagosian Gallery, London, 2011[16]
Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria (2012)[27]
Cecily Brown, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, 2014[16]
"Combing the Hair" (Côte d'Azur), 2013, oil on linen[28] Gagosian Paris announces the exhibition of new paintings by Cecily Brown. This will be her first solo exhibition in Paris, France on October, 19–20 December 2014. She displayed 11 canvases at the exhibit where she focuses on the themes of narcissism and autoeroticism.[29]
Cecily Brown, Untitled, 2012, oil on linen[30] Gagosian Gallery of New York City presents recent paintings by Cecily Brown on 7 May – 22 June 2013. This will be her first solo exhibition in New York since 2008.
Her work has appeared at the Whitney Biennial 2004 in New York,[31] The Triumph of Painting at the Saatchi Gallery, London and "Greater New York" at P.S. 1, New York.
Group shows include:[16]
Cecily Brown, Jeff Koons, Charles Ray, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, 2016[16]
Surface Tension, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, 2015 [16]
Interrupting Nature, Galerie Maximillian, Aspen, 2015 [16]
La Peregrina, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2015 [16]
Rubens and His Legacy: From Van Dyck to Cézanne, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2015[16]
How Soon Was Now, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, 2014 [16]
Art fairs include[16]
Jeffrey Deitch at The Armory Show 2017, New York, 2017 [16]
Paula Cooper Gallery at FOG Design+Art 2017, San Francisco, 2017 [16]
Universal Limited Art Editions at Art Basel in Miami Beach 2016, Miami Beach, 2016 [16]
Two Palms at Art Basel in Miami Beach 2016, Miami Beach, 2016 [16]
Two Palms at IFPDA Print Fair 2016, New York, 2016 [16]
Two Palms at Art Basel 2016, Basel, 2016 [16]
Two Palms at The Armory Show 2016, New York, 2016 [16]
Contemporary Fine Arts at Art Basel in Miami Beach 2015, Miami Beach, 2015 [16]
Two Palms at Art Basel in Miami Beach 2015, Miami Beach, 2015 [16]
Two Palms at IFPDA Print Fair 2015, NYC, 2015 [16]
Two Palms at Art Basel 2015, Basel, 2015 [16]
Contemporary Fine Arts at Art Basel in Hong Kong 2015, 2015 [16]
Two Palms at Art Basel in Miami Beach 2014, Miami Beach, 2014 [16]
Contemporary Fine Arts at Frieze London 2014, 2014[16]
Two Palms at Art Basel 2014, 2014 [16]
Collections
Brown's work has attracted the attention of private art collectors including Elton John and Michael Ovitz. Her paintings are in the permanent collections of important museums and institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Tate Modern, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and the Des Moines Art Center.[5]
Art market
Brown is represented by Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin. Between 2000 and 2015, she was also represented by Gagosian Gallery.[32] She previously showed with Deitch Projects.[33] 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.[34] 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.[35]