Cecily Brown

Deitch Projects, New York
Private Collection, Florida
Sotheby's, New York, 14 November 2000, Lot 1
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

This work is in good condition overall. There is evidence of overall wear and handling to the sides and edges of the canvas. There are several contained areas of surface craquelure in the upper right quadrant and along the top edge, all of which appears stable. Under ultraviolet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. Unframed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Cecily Brown is distinguished for her stimulating and playful confusion of the traditionally perceived boundaries of abstraction and figural representation. Her expansive gestural canvases, riddled with intimations of erotic imagery, engage the language of painting itself, the sensuality of the medium and ability to manipulate the viewer’s perception through its descriptive possibilities. A luscious fusion of painterly abstraction and tantalizing figuration, Twenty Million Sweethearts is a striking example of the pivotal body of work that brought Brown to the forefront of contemporary painting. An orgy of shapes explodes onto the two-meter wide canvas forming an energetic overall composition. Brown’s distinctive painterly style is layered with suggestions of pornographic imagery, entangled in concentrations of frenetic brushwork and the adjacent free floating forms.

Brown’s practice is deeply entrenched in the history of painting. Shifting between abstraction and representation in an expressionistic manner, her erotic compositions pay homage to the legacy of the Abstract Expressionist painters that had dominated the New York art scene decades before her. Brown acknowledges her interest in the Abstract Expressionist paintings of the 1940s that were still engaged with the Surrealist interest in the unconscious. “If I had to place where it all comes from, the moment that interests me the most in twentieth century painting, and which I feel was not taken that far because abstraction happened in such an extreme way, is the moment when Rothko, Gorky and Newman were doing those biomorphic things that just hovered on the edge of representation. They’re not quite abstract and they are absolutely grounded in the figure” (Cecily Brown, quoted in Exh. Cat., C. Mac Giolla Leith, ‘Painting Sensation,’ Cecily Brown: Paintings, Modern Art Oxford, 2005, pp. 52-53). Employing sex as her subject, Brown’s exuberant abstract canvases integrate these biomorphic forms, picking up where her predecessors left off in her own form of expressionism.

Pornographic imagery serves as a platform for Brown to contemplate that undefined space of representational indeterminacy. Nothing is completely described, only implied. The painting then becomes about looking, as it confronts the viewer with its raunchy subject matter and dynamic painterly technique, seducing the eye into searching for recognizable forms in the frenzy of shapes and rhythmic brushwork. Twenty Million Sweethearts seduces the viewer into a promiscuous game of hide-and-go-seek, where an explicit detail will suddenly snap into focus. With each glance, the painting evolves into an experience of visual pleasure, repeatedly revealing itself to the imagination.