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March 11, 2006
Erotic Art
Cecily Brown's canvases depict her own carnal fantasies with mesmerising abandon - and phenomenal draughtsmanship, says Richard Dorment
Though born in London (in 1969) and trained at the Slade, British artist Cecily Brown's career took off when she moved to New York in 1996. There she made her name with colour-drenched figurative paintings notable for their explicit sexual content.
Right from the beginning, Brown used paint as a metaphor for hot sex. Paint was smeared, stabbed and dribbled on the canvas as figures appeared and disappeared from beneath voluptuous skeins of rich colour. At first, she painted rabbits copulating in pairs and en masse, then moved on to images of men and women engaged in most of the possible forms of sexual activity.
There was a difference between these early pictures and real pornography. Brown's paintings were stream-of-consciousness visualisations of her own sexual fantasies. And, as in all fantasy, there are no limits or boundaries as to what goes on in her paintings.
Bacchanal (2001): the figures appear and disappear beneath voluptuous colour
Floating through the canvases were open mouths, spread legs, and erect penises, depictions of gang-bangs, male and female masturbation, and both oral and anal sex. You name it, Brown was painting it. If you want a literary parallel to these early works, think Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Ulysses.
In recent years, the overt sexual imagery has tapered off a bit. Still, you'd be surprised at how few full-frontal depictions of the sexual act there are in the history of art, and she has one 10ft high in a show of 16 of her paintings at Modern Art Oxford.
Standing in front of some of the more explicit pictures, you are mesmerised. But, after the initial jolt wears off, you see that what is most impressive about Brown's art is its emotional truth, its complete honesty.
Unlike any of her contemporaries either here or in the US, she doesn't do irony. I can find no distance between the artist and her subject. There is a truthfulness in these raunchy, funny, perverse pictures that is rare in contemporary art. This is who Cecily Brown is.
Before I discuss her handling of paint, you need to know one thing about Brown that might not be obvious in the Oxford show: she is a superb draughtsman. In Four Letter Heaven, a short animated film made by Brown in 1995 that is being shown at Oxford, the figures are, as always, up to the old rumpy-pumpy. Even for the three or four minutes the film lasts, you can't miss her dazzling ability to draw the human figure, in bed and out, with a light, springy, living line.
But that is also a problem in the earlier paintings. Until around 2002, the pictures are spoiled for me by her tendency to use the brush as though it were a pencil.
Two Figures in a Landscape (2002)
Take, for example, Two Figures in a Landscape. The monumental figures shown copulating in the centre of the canvas are beautifully painted. But in the background and foreground the delineation of the foliage is fussy, the brushstrokes finicky, the texture of the paint somehow greasy and unpleasant.
Something changed around 2002. In that year she moved away from the tightly constricted early style to find a new breadth in her handling of paint. Suddenly, the paint relaxes, as though she has stopped trying too hard, like an actor who has learned not to overact.
It is Brown's mature work that I find so satisfying. An example is These Foolish Things, a Boucher-like scene of a nude man and woman lying on a bed in a delirium of post-coital bliss. (Well, there's more to it than that, but I can't describe in this newspaper what's going on.) Now the paint is luscious but not oily, laid on the canvas with excitement but also with complete control. Brown is a thrilling colourist, and here the bodies merge into surroundings that explode in an orgasm of soft pastel greens and flesh tones. Glorious.
Through all the work, she constantly quotes from artists she admires - de Kooning, Gorky, Bacon, Goya, and Guston. Yet she does this not in a spirit of pastiche, but of homage. She's too sure of who she is to be overwhelmed these great figures from the past.
It's too soon to say that Brown will have staying power. Many another young artist who was just as good as she is now hasn't developed in an interesting way. But the work I've seen so far is impressive, and from the evidence of this show, it is getting better and better.
'Cecily Brown: Paintings' is at Modern Art Oxford, Pembroke Street, Oxford (01865 722733), until Aug 28.
From this week, reviews of gallery exhibitions by award-winning writer Richard Dorment and the rest of the Daily Telegraph team will appear on Tuesdays.
Posted by ronnie at March 11, 2006 07:30 PM