Cecily Brown

Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery

This work appears in excellent condition overall. The surface is bright, clean and fresh. Under ultraviolet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. Unframed.
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Cecily Brown's paintings straddle the divide between representational, figurative art and abstraction in a manner that subjugates neither one to the other but rather elevates each to an original unity. This work, Don't Bring Me Down, is an abstraction, a pictorial declaration of self-preservation, and yet, there are seemingly recognizable elements in the composition, which elicit a response akin to recognition. The viewer is not hooked by any explicit figuration, but instead it is the impression that beyond the immediacy inherent to the gestural quality of her paint there is a purposefulness that extends beyond mere rhythm.  The raven-like silhouette of bright red to the right, the cascading waterfall of whites and blues emanating from a gray-black precipice in the center, and the bikini-clad female at the bottom all allude to some concrete narrative without ever getting further than illustrating their presence.  It is as if a page of text has been scrambled, leaving only a few words intact so that the viewer is left with only a sensation of some reality underscored by the rhythm of the paint. Brown asserts her reality in her paint and in the assuredly defensive title of the work, provoking the viewer in a countering move of substantiating a mere sensation.  The viewer is immediately impressed and simultaneously forced to linger, to engage with the discourse contained therein.  This discourse, this autobiographical nature, challenges the history of the abstractionist movement and in so doing asserts Brown's place within its pantheon.