Cecily Brown: Black Painting 1 (2020)
Phaidon and Artspace are proud to present Black Painting 1 (2020), a limited edition by Cecily Brown
The source image for this edition, Black Painting 1 (2020), belongs to a series of paintings the artist initiated as a mechanism for exploring desire.
Inspired by 19th Century French erotica and the art of Francisco Goya, Black Painting 1 (2020) centers around a solitary figure surrounded by a range of lustful, ghostly suitors. Imbued with Brown’s unique sensibility fusing intimacy with complexity, the sombre palette employed for this work reinforces the psychological charge of the scene, as well as the tenuous boundaries between pleasure and torment.
Specifications:
Edition of 50
4-color digital print on Epson Hot Press 330gsm natural paper
Each edition is enclosed in a bespoke portfolio, and accompanied by a comprehensive monograph published by Phaidon
Size: 24.1 cm x 27.9 cm or 9.50 inches x 11.00 inches
British painter Cecily Brown has been based in New York since the 1990s, when she rose to prominence as a leading figure in the contemporary painterly canon. Brown’s paintings demonstrate a unique combination of abstraction and figuration, transcending classical notions of genre and narrative by drawing on a wide range of art historical references.
Variably inspired by the fantastical visual worlds of Bosch and Goya, the organizational principles of Hogarth, and the gestural expressionism of de Kooning, Brown creates energetic and atmospheric canvases that swirl with fragmented bodies.
Cecily Brown’s work is included in public collections such as the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum, New York, the Louisiana Museum, Denmark, the National Gallery of Norway, the Tate Gallery, London, Glenstone Museum, Potomac, and the Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris.
In 2018 – 2019, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen presented CECILY BROWN: Where, When, How Often and with Whom, a twenty-year survey of Brown’s paintings, drawings, and prints. A major exhibition of new paintings was shown at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, from September 2020 to January 2021. Referencing masterpieces from the Palace’s permanent art collection, the exhibition explored the nostalgia surrounding British heritage and the stately home.
Cecily Brown (b. 1969, London) is one of the most celebrated artists working in painting today. Brown draws from the compositional structure, historical motifs, and virtuosic brushwork of master painters across a diverse range of genres. Using a palette ranging from bright hues to deep blacks, her works obscure singular readings as their compositions break down into restless, anfractuous, and elusive activity.
Recent notable one-person exhibitions include ‘Based on a True Story,’ Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (2010); ‘Rehearsal,’ The Drawing Center, New York (2016); ‘If Paradise Were Half as Nice,’ Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2018); ‘Where, When, How Often and with Whom’ at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2018); and a major exhibition of new paintings hung at Blenheim Palace, UK (2020 – 2021).
Cecily Brown’s work is included in public collections such as the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum, New York, the Louisiana Museum, Denmark, the National Gallery of Norway, the Tate Gallery, London, Glenstone Museum, Potomac, and the Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris.
– Courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery