Beschreibung:

Cecily Brown L.C.V. 2003 Oil on linen. 35 1/4 x 35 1/4 in. (89.5 x 89.5 cm). Signed and dated “Cecily Brown 2003” on the reverse.
Provenance Gagosian Gallery, New York Exhibited Waterville, Colby College Museum of Art, Contemporary Painting, June 27-September 19, 2004, p. 18 (illustrated; illustrated on exhibition invitation) Catalogue Essay “The gradations between abstract and figurative in Cecily Brown’s work can be traced from one painting to another.Their effect is to force the viewer to become active.The viewer defines the meaning that would normally be sought as a component of the image. In Cecily Brown’s painting, the abstract brushstrokes are to be interpreted as vacant spaces in which—as in a mirror—viewers can determine for themselves the explicitness of the sexual content and the degree of aggression contained in the scenes.The time that each individual invests in a painting varies according to the semantic density of what is perceived….With Cecily Brown the oscillation between abstract and concrete is not only an artistic technique in itself but a reference to the discursive construction of sexuality and the consequent need to regard oneself as a participant in a process by whereby sexuality is formulated.” S. Schmidt-Wulffen, “Another Measure of Desire,” Cecily Brown Days of Heaven, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, 2001 “The place I am interested in is where the mind goes when it’s trying to make up for what isn’t there.” Cecily Brown in R. Evrén, “A Dispatch From TheTropic of Flesh,” Cecily Brown Gagosian Gallery, NewYork, 2000 Cecily Brown’s paintings impose a range of historical modes of painterly abstraction upon imagery whose sexual connotations run the gamut from in-your-face explicitness to coy innuendo. Like colorful contemporary Rorschach tests, Brown’s paintings open themselves up to a staggering array of interpretations; vivid coloration and lively gesture combine to create the illusion of a tasteful opacity that belies the undercurrents of transgression and voyeurism that lurk in almost every one of her canvases." L.C.V. 2003 is one of Brown’s less explicit works: an impressionistic tableau of light and color; its earthy brown, orange and yellow foreground and pale blue and violet background coalesce in a middle-ground of faintly suggested trees and shrubs. A tangle of flesh-colored forms at the center of the image, however, suggests the intertwined limbs of a sexual liaison, but, like so much of Brown’s work, what is revealed by her renderings depends as much on what we want to see in them as on what is actually present on the surface of the canvas. Read More