Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid

This survey of the acclaimed British painter Cecily Brown (b. 1969) reexamines the work of an artist whose influential output references both modern heavyweights, such as Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, and Joan Mitchell, and Old Masters, such as Goya, Hogarth, Manet, and Rubens. The book's 21 paintings and 26 works on paper, including drawings, watercolors, sketchbooks, and monotypes, span the three decades of Brown's career to date, including recently completed and never-before-published works. Brown transfixes viewers with sumptuous color, bravura brushwork, and complex narratives that relate to some of European painting's grandest and most time-honored themes, including meditations on mortality through the use of vanitas and still-life motifs. A conversation with the artist provides insight into her process and sources, while an insightful essay examines how Brown's paintings and drawings perform multiple functions, at once representational and abstract, moralizing and sensuous, referential and innovative. A fascinating review of a contemporary artist at the height of her powers, Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid situates Brown in the lineage of the great artists of the last five hundred years.