At a time when the term is an elephant in the room, could Cecily Brown’s art be referred to as Romantic? Cecily feeds into my nostalgia with luscious paint, singing color, curving forms. Not sharp and edgy. As with Kandinsky, her unrestrained, abstract shapes and brilliant colors suggest emotional expression. They also have the romantic exuberance of abstract expressionism. With a dose of ambiguity, mystery. The gorgeousness of her work beguiles me in, and I slowly discover figures and narratives in these abstract forms.
She was brought up in England, her mother a writer, her father an art critic and curator. She herself went to the Slade School and embraced painting. Real, gestural painting with a brush. At a time when the fashion was all but that. The YBAs like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin were the rage, and Cecily was a bit of a fish out of water. She quickly moved to NYC, maybe more accepting of her brand of art, and has stayed.
She loves the Old Masters, Bruegel, Bosch, and newer ones like Hogarth, Fragonard, Delacroix. And then Picasso, De Kooning….The list is long. She loves paintings teeming with activity and with narrative, usually of a moral nature. For her, multiple entry points invite the viewer to discover, to stay with a piece for a while. I imagine her as the A+ student, rooted in history, studying these artists. She will sketch different segments of masterpieces, internalizing them, to the point that she can innately reconstruct the paintings. As a puzzle. Then she will take a little from here, a little from there, and add her own imagination to construct her work. She will reuse her art historical references over and over, never tiring of them. Maybe it’s this minute preparation and dedication which impart her art with its spontaneous, vibrant quality.
Girl on a Swing, 2004, 96 in X 76 in
I love Girl with a Swing, an earlier painting inspired by Fragonard and Goya. The elegant Madame, in an improbable position with her upturned petticoat offered for her lover’s enjoyment, while her dutiful husband does the work. Cecily has struck all the right notes here in terms of color, light, and line. Plus it’s playful, not so sexually overt as some of her pieces.
Carnivaland Lent, 2006 –2008, 97 inX 103 in
Or Carnival and Lent, a tilt to Bruegel. With beautiful color and texture, and full of activity, it is embedded with allusions to sin and excess.
Photography and current events also have their place. The monumental tryptique Where, When, How Often and with Whom? references a Muslim woman recently forced off the beach in Nice. Her attire is morally incorrect in secular France. She is besieged by police, all men, and surrounded by people, mainly white. No one cares. She is all alone.
Where, When, How Often and with Whom?, 2017, triptych, oil on linen, overall 7' 5 3⁄8“ × 33' 7⁄8”
I’m not the only one to enjoy her work. She has become a blockbuster, selling in the millions of dollars. While not a fan of art for the mega-rich, I am a fan of her.
So is this the new Romanticism ? Not in terms of a silver lining, but the luxuriousness of her paintings is a site for sore eyes.