On our breaks wed get to go into the collection!
Cecily Brown,Girl on a Swing, 2004.
Oil on linen, 72 96 in.
Cecily Brown,Body (after Sickert), 2022. Oil on linen, 13 × 17 in. (33 × 43.2 cm). Private collection, New York © Cecily Brown
(182.9 243.8 cm).
National Gallery of Art, Washington.
She is also a painter who hopes you will stay a while with her work.
Cecily Brown,Girl on a Swing, 2004. Oil on linen, 72 × 96 in. (182.9 × 243.8 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of the Collectors Committee, 2015.62.1 © Cecily Brown
So its a very slow experience.
But at the same time, I love to make something very eye-catching.
Hence the bright color of these early works.
Cecily Brown,High Society, 1998. Oil on linen, 76 × 98 in. (193 × 248.9 cm). Martin and Toni Sosnoff © Cecily Brown
I made an image, and it was withmytongue in his cheek.
It was pretty crap.)
Bunnies were an early subject.
Cecily Brown,Lobsters, oysters, cherries and pearls, 2020. Oil on linen 59 × 67 in. (149.9 × 170.2 cm). Collection of Suzi and Andrew B. Cohen © Cecily Brown
They were bunnies but also representational questions (is it a duck or a bunny?)
that she borrowed from Wittgenstein via Jasper Johns.
Cecily Brown,High Society, 1998.
Cecily Brown,Justify My Love, 2003–4. Oil on linen, 90 × 78 in. (228.6 × 198.1 cm). Forman Family Collection © Cecily Brown
Oil on linen, 76 98 in.
(193 248.9 cm).
I think I was always interested in subjects that dont really go away, Brown remarks.
Cecily Brown,Saboteur four times, 2019. Oil on linen and oil on UV-curable pigment on linen, in four parts. Overall: 67 × 212 in. (170.2 × 538.5 cm). Private collection © Cecily Brown
Id moved into a big studio, she remembers.
She was struggling, she recalls, with putting everything she had into a painting.
So she began to work on several at once.
Cecily Brown,Black shipwreck, 2018. Oil on linen, 83 × 79 in. (210.8 × 200.7 cm). Collection of Nancy and Pat Forster © Cecily Brown
She also made a concerted effort to avoid deadlines.
Cecily Brown,Lobsters, oysters, cherries and pearls, 2020.
Oil on linen 59 67 in.
(149.9 170.2 cm).
Her so-called Black Paintings were a challenge to herself.
Her fear: that viewers would see the color and at some point move on.
She changed tack and assigned herself paintings in black and white only.
Then if they see something like this, they say, Wait,what?
I always wanted that Wait,what?
The Wait,what?
Its the idea of the horrors and insomnia and incubuses and succubuses and nightmares, Brown says.
Ive always thought that paintings were a great place to talk about so many things at once.
If they were movies, they could be like dramadiesa horror and a comedy and a romance.
Cecily Brown,Justify My Love, 20034.
Oil on linen, 90 78 in.
(228.6 198.1 cm).
Forman Family Collection Cecily Brown
We move through more galleries.
But I felt the hunt is always one of those subjects Im drawn to by other people.
Like great Rubens hunts and Delacroixbut there was never really any reason to paint a hunt.
That is, until a show in an old estate came up.
Cecily Brown,Saboteur four times, 2019.
Oil on linen and oil on UV-curable pigment on linen, in four parts.
Overall: 67 212 in.
(170.2 538.5 cm).
Private collection Cecily Brown
Her most recent paintings are in the rooms entitled Returning and Revisiting.
Like, never, she tells our group.
InSelfiethe frame contains frames, yet nothing seems cordoned off or still.
It hums on its own excitingly dissimilar repetitions.
Brown also remembers that when she first graduated art school, she was always worried about returning to ideas.
When I was younger, I was more afraid of being derivative, she says.
But I think the longer you go on, you find your own way of working.
Cecily Brown,Black shipwreck, 2018.
Oil on linen, 83 79 in.
(210.8 200.7 cm).
And there are only so many stories, really.
Cecily Brown: Themes and Variations is on view at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia through May 25.
