Surveying three decades of the British painter Cecily Brown’s career, with its vibrant mixture of gestural expression, canonical and pop references, and subversive themes
 
This stunning volume surveys the pioneering career of Cecily Brown (b. 1969), one of the most celebrated artists working in painting today. Edited by co-curators Anna Katherine Brodbeck and Simonetta Fraquelli, with contributions from writer and art critic Aruna D’Souza, this book explores Brown's process through paintings and drawings that demonstrate both her radical contemporaneity and her keen reassessment of historical precedents such as old master paintings and abstract expressionism, which have been consistent hallmarks of her art. The book’s probing essays look at her practice, investigate the main themes that recur in Brown’s work, and consider her art from a feminist perspective. Brown reclaimed the heroic gestural expression often affiliated with the male artists of the abstract expressionist generation—largely out of favor with her peers—and in this mode she creates lush, dynamic paintings that often contain erotic content appropriated from art historical or pop culture sources. Moving between figuration and abstraction, Brown subverts gendered tropes in work that often deals with the power imbalances inherent in voyeurism and sexual violence.

Hardcover. 160 pages. 

Exhibition catalogue for Cecily Brown: Themes and Variations, on view at the Barnes Foundation from March 9, 2025 to May 25, 2025.