Cecily Brown at Gagosian Gallery
Too Much Too Soon
By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 15, 2008
Cecily Brown
September 20 through October 25
Gagosian Gallery
555 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
http://www.gagosian.com
As the current exhibition at New York's Gagosian Gallery, through October 25, makes abundantly clear, Cecily Brown, a former bad girl known for combining erotic images with juicy paint, has evolved into the kind of free spirited, loosey goosey painter that many, at one time or another, have aspired to be.
Particularly those who attended art school when the Abstract Expressionists dominated thinking and technique about how to attack a canvas with a loaded brush. We were told to paint from the shoulder and put our full body and gesture into the sweep of color. To attack with abandon and gusto.
That got watered down, literally, by the followers of Clement Greenberg who diluted color which was stained into unprimed canvas leaving a mannered and matte finish. Helen Frankenthaler, for instance, evolved from the seminal "Mountains and Sea" into a decorative lobby artist and favorite of Park Avenue patrons. Sic transit Gloria mundi. The era of giants passed into the way of all flesh.
But who has not felt in their heart of hearts that deKooning, Rothko, Pollock, Gorky, Kline, Motherwell and others were the giants of 20th century American art. Their passing did not go softly into that good night. Art since then has never regained that epic monumentality. Who has not melted into a puddle of mush before a deKooning "Woman" or drowned in the emotional vertigo of Pollock's "Lavender Mist."
That was then and this is now. Or so it seems. If you wait long enough most people forget. A new generation enjoys the brash temerity to enter the lists and attack the muse with renewed vengeance. Even though, spoilers that we are, some of us have seen it all before.
We have slogged through the immense and detailed Mark Stevens biography of deKooning. Accordingly know how agonizingly slowly his paintings evolved and at what an immense personal cost.
Compared to which this show by Brown seems so slap dash. Wham bam thank you ma'am. Gratuitously gestural and ersatz emotional. They suggest that at the end of a day of cranking out yet another overblown, ill considered, histrionic painting, the artist cleaned up, and hopped a cab uptown.
This is a long way from the bad girl who got her there. While not great there was an engaging edge to those earlier erotic canvases. While not well painted they were bold and edgy. When deKooning created the savage "Women" paintings he was often viewed as a misogynist whose rapier brush was actually an instrument of rape and violation. A former student wanted to have me disbarred from the academy for having the bad taste of exposing them to her as great works of art. They were indeed some of the most violent, powerful, and exquisite paintings ever created. It is a leap to use Brown's name in the same sentence with deKooning. As seems the norm among those who write about her work. It is a matter of comparing apples and maraschino cherries.
When a male artist tackles sexuality in a violent manner, such as deKooning, he is viewed as a sexist or worse. A perv. But when a woman artist, like Brown, covers a similar terrain she is hailed as a bold and courageous feminist. Sometimes it works. Formerly, I extended to Brown the benefit of the doubt and cheered her on but now it seems fame has gone to her head and, forgive me for this, she appears to have lost her marbles. Misgivings emerged when she was shown at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, October 18 through
Actually Brown's paintings more accurately might be compared to Joan Mitchell one of the most admired and consistent painters of her generation. Arguably, a better painter than Lee Krasner, or Hedda Sterne, the only official female member of the Irascibles, who posed in a group shot of Abstract Expressionists for Life Magazine.
The point here is that most of the paintings in this sprawling show in the museum scaled Gagogoian Gallery in Chelsea are a mumble jumble of color and gestural brushstrokes. They seem more knocked off than filtered and considered. The assignment appears to have been to spin straw into gold. To be a good earner for one of the largest and most prestigious conglomerates of contemporary art.
Which is to say, truth be told, that I would view the work differently were it not shown in this context. In a more modest setting one would be inclined to take delight in the merits and accomplishments of the artist. Context plays a large part in the tone of these remarks. There are elevated expectations when the work is presented in this setting. The prestige of showing at Gagosian can also blind us from looking long and hard at the work. There is a kind of rush to judgement and blur of critical commentary. The very fact that the artist shows with Gagosian mutes all arguments. Nothing succeeds like success. Go wash your mouth out with soap.
But there is that gnawing enigmatic sense of what might have been were it not for such blind ambition. Like Sue Williams, who started as a raw and strident feminist, Brown might have evolved into a serious, thoughtful, and really nifty painter. Not.