Cecily Brown

This monograph gathers the first decade of Cecily Brown’s work—from her first solo exhibition in 1995 through the year of its publication in 2008—and was published to coincide with a solo show at Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street, New York. From her beginnings as an art student in London in the early 1990s through her subsequent move to New York, Brown developed an energetic painterly style that was constantly in flux between abstraction and figuration. Her first paintings featured rabbits, transitioning to orgiastic scenes of fragmented human bodies in which oil paint transforms into flesh through tumultuous brushwork. Subsequent paintings drew from the history of both painting and popular culture, incorporating landscape, still life, and interior imagery into densely worked compositions.

The volume is profusely illustrated with images of Brown’s paintings and drawings, as well as the art historical and pop-culture sources from which she gathers inspiration. An essay by Dore Ashton, “Cecily Brown en Route,” traces the development of Brown’s career and analyzes her sources and stylistic transformations. A conversation between Brown and Lari Pittman further illuminates her approach to painting.