Cecily Brown

And the bars of my youth

I want there to be a human presence without having to depict it in full.

—Cecily Brown 

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, 1997-98. Oil on canvas, 76-98 inches. 

In my early days in the art world I went out almost every single night with my friends. I had an insatiable craving for fun, and because I couldn’t afford endless dinners in restaurants, most of the time I ended up at a bar—which also happened to be the type of environment where I felt most alive.

There was the “old man bar” north of the gallery where I worked, which had a juke box and whiskey specials. There was the “white trash bar” near the Chelsea Hotel;  and of course the White Horse Tavern and the Cedar Tavern in the West village, where Willem and Elaine de Kooning and the other Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock used to drink. And there was the Ear Inn, where the artist Cecily Brown had been a waitress before she “made it big.” Or at least that was the art world lore said, and I drank that shit down almost as fast as I drank my well cocktails—tonic water and cranberry juice with whatever vodka didn’t come in a plastic sack (I should also mention that I never got hungover and was never, ever late to work—like a super hero).

You know how when you hear a certain song—for me it’s Fiona Apple and Biggie and Britney Spears—and you remember exactly how you felt and where you were and what you were going through in your life when its sound waves first burst into your brain? Exactly what stupid dude you were pining over, driving in your car on Indiana backroads and getting milkshakes at Steak N Shake en route to drink Smirnoff Ices in basements with boys to pass the time, in my case. 

I’m like that about art, too, and I’ll never forget where I was the first time I saw a Cecily Brown show, in 2008––how I was wearing a very high heel purchased from a Barneys Warehouse Sale, something I could never walk in now, dreaming about a life where I’d be an adult and feel like I belonged around fashion and art instead of some small interloper who was mostly just mind blown and out of my element. I’ll never forget how startled I was by the absolute beauty of her paintings, the way they seduced me into getting closer; the flesh tones and the whispers of body parts and the ghostly outlines of dicks and pussies and torsos and rear ends that disappeared when you got too close and showed up again when you stepped back. The faint appearance of rabbits—the sluttiest of animals—the alchemy of how she took all the prettiest shades of every color and created visual explosions that echoed and ricocheted around my head. 

A devotee of her work ever since, I’ve seen every Cecily Brown show I could and soaked up every morsel of information about her I was ever made aware of. When she started making work on small canvases, 24 inches on the biggest side, maybe, rather than, say, 120 inches, I remember being so happy that her paintings still worked on any scale. I remember when she showed small watercolors, I heard some rumor that she’d made them while pregnant because her doctor didn’t want her painting with oils on a big scale due to the fumes. I remember thinking that was such an unbreakable glass ceiling. Sometimes birthing people really do have to choose, don’t they? There are some non-negotiable ways that you can not actually have it all, I remember thinking even then, when the cultural conversation about leaning in and my personal thoughts about pregnancy and kids was still years away. 

This past weekend I saw Cecily’s new work at Paula Cooper Gallery on 21st street in New York, and I don’t know how else to describe the happiness I felt other than to say that the show tickled me. It made me feel effervescent. The colors and the brushstrokes were lush and sexy and hinted at body parts and things bodies do, and the references to Abstract Expressionist and Old Master paintings, Flemish still life and early porn were endless. Each work was a tapestry of sensual beauty and a mishmash of SO MANY THINGS I LIKE. There were tiny cherries, nostalgic and charming, and seafood towers with glistening crawfish piled on top of salty oysters. Women performing their toilettes and paintings of other paintings and artists at the easel and people fucking and all the very best things of life in one gorgeous place.

Detail shot from Paula Cooper Gallery exhibition 

Cecily Brown (born 1969) is a British artist who lives and works in New York City. If you’re interested in a woman taking art history—most of which has been made from the perspective of men, depicting women as sexual objects—and turning it into a teeming garden of reclaimed imagery and references, rife with ecstatic and orgiastic bacchanalian sensuality from the perspective of a woman and mother, than I think you might love her work.