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"I have always wanted to make paintings that are impossible to walk past, paintings that grab and hold your attention. The more you look at them, the more satisfying they become for the viewer. The more time you give to the painting, the more you get back."
—Cecily BrownPainted in 2007, Cecily Brown’s Untitled is a striking example of the artist’s highly acclaimed practice that oscillates between abstraction and figuration, past and present, paint and flesh. Engulfing the viewer into a sumptuous field of fervid gestural brushstrokes, the present work expresses Brown’s sensibility of channeling the Old and Modern Masters of the art historical canon under her painterly hand to form a singular visual language that is entirely her own. Here, the lavish hues of blue and purple, the earthy and sensuous fleshy tones, all come together in an orgiastic riot of tantalizing allusions, epitomizing the artist’s words: “The paint is transformed into image, and hopefully paint and image transform themselves into a third and new thing...I want to catch something in the act of becoming something else.”i
![[left] Paolo Veronese, Martyrdom of St. George, 16th century. San Giorgio in Braida, Verona, Image: Scala / Art Resource, NY [right] Willem de Kooning, The North Atlantic Light, 1977. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Image: Art Resource, NY](https://phillips.vo.llnwd.net/v1/web_dev/lot-component/161147_FIG 1.-2_1dccc0cf-618d-435e-892d-29da264b6f7f.png)
[left] Paolo Veronese, Martyrdom of St. George, 16th century. San Giorgio in Braida, Verona, Image: Scala / Art Resource, NY [right] Willem de Kooning, The North Atlantic Light, 1977. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Image: Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York"When I’m looking at paintings from the past, they always seem to be in the present to me; they resonate. I’ve never felt a sense of distance from the past that some people seem to. I find it impossible and actually uninteresting to be concerned only with one’s own time."
—Cecily BrownPerfectly capturing Willem de Kooning’s mantra that “flesh was the reason oil paint was invented," Brown’s practice ultimately channels a host of influences, from the Renaissance and Baroque to Impressionism, Proto-Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism. “Brown’s paintings can speak to us because enough of her shorthand is also ours,” James Lawrence observed. “We also get the glimpses of history as they flow in and out, whether through direct recognition of an image or through indistinct echoes of something familiar.”ii In Untitled, Brown conjures among others a kind of modern Garden of Earthly Delights crossed with de Kooning’s vigorous strokes, the lustrous palette of Veronese and Rubens with the charged movement of Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus, fragmented hints at the bathers of Degas and Cézanne—transforming visions of the past into a contemporary kaleidoscope of painterly revels.
![[left] Hieronymous Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (triptych center panel), 1490-1500. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Image: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY [right] Eugène Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus (sketch), 1826-1827, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Image: agefotostock / Alamy Stock Photo](https://phillips.vo.llnwd.net/v1/web_dev/lot-component/161147_FIG 3-4_002f00de-f4c6-477a-b75f-94adf0f1267f.png)
[left] Hieronymous Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (triptych center panel), 1490-1500. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Image: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY [right] Eugène Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus (sketch), 1826-1827, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Image: agefotostock / Alamy Stock Photo"I need the body as a kind of vehicle to talk about being alive, to understand the world in a way...I need the paint to have a direction and some substance and the substance that appeals to me is the body."
—Cecily BrownOn her predilection for alluding to the human body, Brown explained, “I'm more interested in sublimation. I love the way Francis Bacon talked about the grin without the cat, the sensation without the boredom of its conveyance…I've always wanted to be able to convey figurative imagery in a kind of shorthand, to get it across in as direct a way as possible. I want there to be a human presence without having to depict it in full."iii Brown found her delight in achieving this aim with oil paint, describing the medium as “sensual [because] it moves, it catches the light, it's great for skin and flesh and heft and meat. I wanted to make something that you couldn't tear your eyes away from. 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.”iv
![[left] Cecily Brown, Trouble in Paradise, 1999. Tate, London, Image: © Tate, London / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 Cecily Brown [right] Cecily Brown, Figures in a Landscape #2, 2002. The Broad, Los Angeles, Artwork: © 2021 Cecily Brown](https://phillips.vo.llnwd.net/v1/web_dev/lot-component/161147_FIG 5-6_c03cd731-c3c9-47b7-a463-91da7e7edcee.png)
[left] Cecily Brown, Trouble in Paradise, 1999. Tate, London, Image: © Tate, London / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 Cecily Brown [right] Cecily Brown, Figures in a Landscape #2, 2002. The Broad, Los Angeles, Artwork: © 2021 Cecily BrownUltimately self-identifying as a figurative painter, Brown works at the cusp of representation and abstraction, driving her works within the liminal space between identification and visuality, paint and substance. “I’m far more interested in a moment where figuration breaks down,” she elucidated. “I usually describe it as breaking down rather than abstract because it really is this back and forth. Some works...have far clearer graphic imagery and others really don’t. It’s always been important to me to have both, and some works walk the tight rope and have both within a painting.”v Untitled is a lavish manifestation of this fused, pendular relationship that also extends to the artist’s own dialogue with her creations as she views the medium of paint as a source in itself. “I take all my cues from the paint, so it’s a total back and forth between my will and the painting directing what to do next.”vi
![[left] Pablo Picasso, Standing Nude, 1908. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York [right] Paul Cézanne, Five Bathers, 1900-1904. Musée d’Orsay, Paris (Anonymous donation subject to usufruct), Image: © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY](https://phillips.vo.llnwd.net/v1/web_dev/lot-component/161147_FIG 7-8_2e96177d-e261-45c9-ac57-83ba2b45680c.png)
[left] Pablo Picasso, Standing Nude, 1908. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York [right] Paul Cézanne, Five Bathers, 1900-1904. Musée d’Orsay, Paris (Anonymous donation subject to usufruct), Image: © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY"The paintings are like doors flung open suddenly to reveal something shocking. Because they are so energetic they might also be viewed as moments of a movie whose sudden arrest causes the mind’s eye to trip over itself in its own voracity, tangling in dense webs of colored light, striving to mark order of intense and disordered sensations."
—Robert EvrénFor Brown, uniting both the figurative and abstract to its fullest visual expressions in a single composition is “like pulling a moment of clarity in the middle of all the chaos.”vii Immersing the viewer’s eye and imagination into a visual feast, the artist’s luscious swathes of luminous pigment in Untitled at once lure us into frenzied, surreal figments of fantasized realms and present a colorful exuberance of known realities, richly materializing the heart of Brown’s artistic investigations. “I am interested in the unfixed nature of things. I want the 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.”viii
i Cecily Brown, quoted in Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, “Painting Sensations,” in Cecily Brown: Paintings, exh. cat., Modern Art Oxford, 2005, p. 55.
ii James Lawrence, Cecily Brown, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2013, p. 12.
iii Cecily Brown, quoted in Gagosian Gallery, Cecily Brown, press release, August 25, 2008.
iv Cecily Brown, quoted in Derek Peck, "New York Minute: Cecily Brown," AnOther, September 14, 2012.
v Cecily Brown, quoted in “Cecily Brown Interview: Take No Prisoners,” Louisiana Channel: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, November 3, 2015.
vi Cecily Brown, quoted in Derek Peck, "New York Minute: Cecily Brown," AnOther, September 14, 2012.
vii Ibid.
viii Cecily Brown, quoted in Dore Ashton, Cecily Brown, New York, 2008, p. 25.Provenance
Gagosian Gallery, New York
Private Collection
Acquired from the above by the present ownerLiterature
Ealan Wingate and Rose Dergan, eds., Cecily Brown, New York, 2008, p. 238 (illustrated, p. 239)
Property from an Important American Collection
11
Untitled
signed and dated "Cecily Brown 2007" on the reverse
oil on canvas
89 x 85 1/8 in. (226.1 x 216.2 cm)
Painted in 2007.
Estimate
$3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $6,140,500
Amanda Lo Iacono
New York Head of Department & Head of Auctions
+1 212 940 1278
aloiacono@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 17 November 2021
1
Shara Hughes
Inside Outside
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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2
Jadé Fadojutimi
My Umbrella Has A Nourishing Disguise
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $877,000
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3
Ewa Juszkiewicz
Girl in Blue
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $730,800
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4
Kwesi Botchway
Green Sofa
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $214,200
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5
Titus Kaphar
Fade With Time
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $816,500
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6
David Hammons
Puzzling Times
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $877,000
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7
Raymond Pettibon
No Title (Let him come...)
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $3,418,000
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8
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $11,870,000
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9
Georgia O'Keeffe
Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $7,748,000
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10
Alexander Calder
White Moon
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,628,000
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11
Cecily Brown
Untitled
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $6,140,500
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12
Willem de Kooning
Composition
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
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13
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,692,000
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14
This lot is no longer available.
15
Amy Sherald
Welfare Queen
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $3,902,000
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16
Francis Bacon
'Pope with Owls'
Estimate $35,000,000 - 45,000,000
Sold for $33,000,000
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17
Luc Tuymans
Wallpaper
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,250,000
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18
Pierre Bonnard
Panier de fruit
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $4,991,000
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19
Honor Titus
Linden Blvd Jazz Radio
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $163,800
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20
Matthew Wong
Time After Time
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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21
Avery Singer
European Ego Ideal
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $4,023,000
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22
Mark Tansey
Garden
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $2,934,000
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23
KAWS
THE WAY HE KNOWS
Estimate $850,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $1,542,500
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24
Wassily Kandinsky
Fliessend
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
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25
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (from Famous Negro Athlete Series)
Estimate $750,000 - 1,100,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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26
Peter Saul
Ice Box #3
Estimate $350,000 - 450,000
Sold for $441,000
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27
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (The Door)
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $8,549,500
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28
Emily Mae Smith
Feast and Famine
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $1,361,000
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29
Gerhard Richter
Weiß (White)
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $5,717,000
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30
Robert Ryman
Series #25 (White)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,421,500
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31
Frank Stella
Double Concentric Square
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $1,845,000
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32
Carmen Herrera
Amarillo y Negro
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $630,000
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33
Andy Warhol
The Last Supper/Be a Somebody with a Body
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $6,806,000
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34
Christopher Wool
Blue Fool
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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35
This lot is no longer available.
36
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Six PM, Malaga
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $567,000
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37
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Qusuquzah #5
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $504,000
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38
Mike Kelley
Memory Ware Flat #3
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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39
George Condo
Collision Course
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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40
Bruce Nauman
Untitled (from Fifteen Pairs of Hands)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $983,000
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41
David Hammons
Untitled
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $3,660,000
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42
Nicolas Party
Houses
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $1,724,000
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43
Hurvin Anderson
Country Club—Mixed Doubles
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $604,800
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44
Max Ernst
Ohne Titel (les hommes ne le sauront jamais)
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $504,000
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45
Max Ernst
Kachina, le chien de Peggy Guggenheim
Estimate $280,000 - 350,000
Sold for $277,200
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46
Cy Twombly
Untitled
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $786,250
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47
Reggie Burrows Hodges
On the Verge: Green
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $567,000
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48
Max Ernst
Portrait de Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $176,400
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