Cecily Brown Armed and Fearless, 2014, seen on view at The Box @ Phillips
Brimming with explosive color and energetic strokes, Armed and Fearless, 2014, is emblematic of the distinctive pictorial repertoire Cecily Brown developed over the course of two decades. Abstract at first glance, the painting transforms into a complex narrative upon further inspection, as fleshly pink hues emerge from a landscape of atmospheric blues and greens. Adopting the shape of nude bodies enmeshed in verdant fauna, these figurative strokes animate the composition and elucidate its sensual theme. Speaking to this point, the artist told U.K. magazine AnOther in 2012, "I like the fact that because my earlier work was so known for having erotic contents, I actually need to give very little now and it's seen as erotic or hinting at erotic."
Exhibited at Brown's first solo exhibition in Paris in 2014, Armed and Fearless belongs to a series that pulsates with unbridled energy, redolent of art historical influences spanning Baroque excess and Abstract Expressionist lyricism. The artist's idiosyncratic mastery of the painted medium has often been compared to the work of Chaim Soutine, Max Ernst or American Abstract Expressionists Phillip Guston and Willem de Kooning; yet, all the while, she manifests a painterly vision that is wholly unique, announcing her own position within the grand history of Western painting. In contrast to many of the other artists of the YBA generation that she first worked alongside in London during the 1990s, Brown's career has remained unequivocally focused on the painted medium.
I am interested in the unfixed nature of things. I want [my work] to have a trapped energy so that the paint seems to vibrate in place. I want the viewing of it to approximate the experience of being in the world.
Brown's first major solo retrospective came at the Museum of Fine Art Boston in late 2006. Today, her paintings sit in various international museum collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Tate, London.
First revealed at The Box @ Phillips, a new exhibition space at our 450 Park Avenue location, Armed and Fearless will come under the hammer during our London 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 7 March 2019. It perfectly exemplifies the crux of the artist's oeuvre, translating movement and vigor into tangible, colored matter.