Cecily Brown

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Born: 1969

Summary of Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown may have found a comfortable position in the London art world, where she would have felt quite at home. The fashionable Young British Artists were making their impact just as she was finishing up her art school education. Brown, like so many other ambitious artists before her, abandoned London for the edgy, make-or-break New York City. Her spectacular ascent to prominence in the art world includes signing with one of the world’s most famous galleries, the Gagosian. Brown is well renowned for her large paintings that are heavily pigmented and include sexually graphic themes.

Male painters such as Francis Bacon and Gilbert & George dominated the grotesque genre in painting with their blatantly sexualized representations of women. Cecily Brown was one of the forerunners in the genre’s development to include female artists’ work. Despite the often paradoxical lavishness of her materials – thickly applied paint and richly varnished canvas – the grotesque triumphs in Brown’s portrayals of open sexual topics. The opulence is expressive, disturbing, and visceral, proving that the subject matter of a piece is usually meant to shock the spectator.

Brown is considered to have based her career in some ways on the heritage or, less favourably, remains of the male Abstract Expressionists. She mocks sexuality with equal parts sensuality and repulsiveness, combining “abject ideas about the body, the cheap and nasty.” as she puts it. Brown has persevered in her attempts to subvert the machismo of male artists before her, such as Ab Ex predecessors de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, and has transformed what could easily be interpreted as sexism and prurience into a kind of unflinching examination of human nature, including sexuality, violence, and excess.

Brown is regularly mentioned in feminist art circles. Brown has constantly maintained her creative authority, similar to previous female artists who aggressively questioned the canon, which some claim has typically presented “masculine” art as indicative of a type of performative bravado in the creation of large-scale works. While her work’s topics can be interpreted as feminist to some extent, Brown sees her whole approach to art-making as distinctively feminist. In a recent debate on the subject, she stated: “I don’t have a driver’s licence. I’m not a cook. I’m very proud of the fact that I can’t do a lot of things. Painting is something I’m capable of…”

Childhood

Cecily Brown grew born in the beautiful countryside of Surrey, the daughter of British author Shena Mackay and prominent art critic and curator David Sylvester. She grew raised in the arts as the daughter of fairly bohemian parents. When Brown was still a child, Sylvester introduced her to the painter Francis Bacon, and Bacon’s impact has been continuous. Brown was inspired to pursue a career in the arts by her mother’s inventiveness, work ethic, and ambition, despite the fact that she claims she had already decided to be an artist at the age of three.

Early Life

Brown left her more typical academic school in 1985, at the age of sixteen, to pursue painting at the Epsom School of Art and Design in Surrey. She relocated to London two years later, when she took drawing and printing classes at Morley College, trained under painter Maggi Hambling, and cleaned houses to make ends meet. Brown had developed a strong friendship with Bacon, whom he regarded as a personal buddy, after the two met while touring local art exhibits together. Brown received a BA in Fine Arts with First Class Honors from the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1993.

Mid Life

Brown struggled to make a name for herself in the early 1990s London art scene, which was dominated by the Young British Artists’ attention-getting installations and spectacular pieces. She thought she’d do better in New York City, where she’d fallen in love with the sun during a prior exchange student visit during her undergraduate years. The contrast between bright, lively New York and dreary London piqued her interest, so she relocated across the Atlantic in 1995.

Brown began her career as an animator in New York City, where he experimented with the technique. Four Letter Heaven, an erotic mixed-media film she produced, presented at the Telluride Film Festival in 1995. She was hesitant to try painting at first, preferring to spend her time in the city exploring other creative outlets. Brown lived the life of the classic hungry artist while establishing roots in the city, working as a server and subsisting on pizza and bagels. She spent her evenings producing art and finally concentrated entirely on painting in her Manhattan studio in the Meatpacking district.

Brown’s large-scale paintings showed a tumultuous, violent sensuality. A flurry of bodies appeared in the paintings, which were abstract but still recognisable. Her breakthrough came soon, with her first solo exhibition at Deitch Projects in 1997. Brown was no longer a starving artist after a second successful show the following year and the subsequent financial and critical acclaim. Brown was signed by the Gagosian Gallery, one of the most prestigious and important galleries in the world, when she was 29 years old. Brown, whose faith in her talents was easily shaken, was represented by a major gallery and her work had begun to appear in important museums, despite the fact that she was represented by a big gallery and her work had begun to appear in notable museums.

Brown shared a studio with Sean Landers, an artist with whom she had an intimate connection during the early years of her explosive career. The studio served as a safe haven for her, while the city grid served as a sanctuary. Brown spent as much time in the studio as she could, almost obsessively painting, yet she was still unsatisfied with her output. She stated that she drank hard and partied frequently during her early years in New York as a young, up-and-coming artist, and that she relished a life of drama and intensity in some respects.

In 2000, following a particularly intense argument, her lover, the artist Russell Haswell, attempted to cut her neck and then leaped out the apartment window in an attempt at suicide. After the unsuccessful effort, the two parted ways. Brown blamed the idea of the tortured genius artist and the lifestyle that seems to require that an artist wander between the realms of New York City’s nearly frantic hedonism and art world life, as well as the severe self-discipline of the studio, in retrospect.

Famous Art by Cecily Brown

Puce Moment

1997

Puce Moment is a large-scale collage depicting numerous, spread human bodies in an intense, orgiastic condition. This painting is crammed with somewhat abstract bits of genitals, thighs, arms, breasts, and heads with gaping mouths, all in bright pinks and reds, as is typical of Brown’s early work. Sexuality is depicted as monstrous in works like this one; what could normally be regarded as sensuous becomes visceral and repulsive due to the thick application of paint and glossy varnish.

High Society

1998

High Society is a jumbled mess of erotica and cash. Brown’s earlier works were commonly titled after great Hollywood pictures, and this is no exception. An array of naked, muscle-bound males and high-society men dressed in tailcoats and top hats imply luxury and frantic physical interaction abound in the artwork. Some of the male characters are observed ejaculating into indistinguishable body and penile pieces. An ornate Baroque, Rubensian tableaux stretching over huge canvases or a Tiepolo painting alive with the cavorting nude figures of ancient gods adorning the ceilings of royal dining halls are evoked by the backdrop, which is a mix of rich gold and blue.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

2014

Brown, who was known for her “bigger-is-better,” large-scale works, shocked the art world when she began producing small-scale paintings in 2004. Brown used a ladder to create an easel at which she stood, literally zooming in while still attempting to keep her brushwork loose and gestural. Rather than working on a large canvas on the wall or the floor, Brown used a ladder to create an easel at which she stood, literally zooming in while still attempting to keep her brushwork loose and gestural. She didn’t start displaying these little paintings, dubbed “jewel-like,” until after she left Gagosian, a blue-chip gallery, in May of 2015.

BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)

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Cecily Brown may have found a comfortable position in the London art world, where she would have felt quite at home.
The fashionable Young British Artists were making their impact just as she was finishing up her art school education.

Brown, like so many other ambitious artists before her, abandoned London for the edgy, make-or-break New York City.
Her spectacular ascent to prominence in the art world includes signing with one of the world’s most famous galleries, the Gagosian.
Brown is well renowned for his large paintings that are heavily pigmented and include sexually graphic themes.

Male painters such as Francis Bacon and Gilbert & George dominated the grotesque genre in painting with their blatantly sexualized representations of women.
Cecily Brown was one of the forerunners in the genre’s development to include female artists’ work.
Brown is regularly mentioned in feminist art circles.

Brown has constantly maintained her creative authority, similar to previous female artists who aggressively questioned the canon, which some claim has typically presented “masculine” art as indicative of a type of performative bravado in the creation of large-scale works.
In a recent debate on the subject, she stated: “I don’t have a driver’s licence.