Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art

Cecily Brown (British, lives in U.S.A., b. 1969). Dana was recently looking at Cecily Brown's work. Brown came to prominence in the 1990s, during an international wave of interest in British contemporary art and artists. These examples are abstract paintings that hint at figuration; forms resembling bodies, and parts of bodies, can be found throughout. Brown also paints straight-forward figuration, and sometimes depicts sexual acts and acts of violence. One may perceive implied eroticism in the works seen here.

The next few posts feature paintings depicting bodies and flesh--with imagery ranging from the morbid to the satirical--and contain images by painters who influenced Brown, as well as painters she may have influenced.

Untitled (Shipwreck) 2017. Oil on linen, 97 x 151 inches. Source.

Figure in a Landscape 2002. Oil on linen, 80 x 80 inches. Source.

Girl Eating Birds 2004. Oil on linen; three panels, 77 x 55 inches each. Source.

The Sick Leaves 2011. Oil on linen; three parts, 103 x 83 inches each. Source.

Combing the Hair (Côte d’Azur) 2013. Oil on linen, 109 x 113 inches. Source.

Perhaps strangely, Cecily Brown's fleshy images remind me of a few well-known instances of artists using paint to depict animal carcasses. Brown was undoubtedly quite familiar with the work of Francis Bacon, who painted the third example. Brown's father, the critic David Sylvester, interviewed and wrote about Bacon throughout his career.

Chaïm Soutine (Russian, born Belarus, active in France, 1893-1943). Carcass of Beef ca. 1925. Oil on canvas, 51 1/2 x 38 3/4 inches. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Dutch 1606-1669). Slaughtered Ox 1655. Oil on panel, 37 1/2 x 27 inches. Louvre, Paris. Source.

Willem de Kooning (American, born Netherlands, 1904-1997). "Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented," Willem de Kooning famously stated in a 1949 lecture. His 1950s paintings of women were controversial: for one thing, abstract expressionists weren't supposed to paint people. The grotesque appearance of his stylized women became another sticking point. However, the quote seems equally relevant to his more purely abstract paintings. Untitled XVI, from 1976, bears comparison with some of the Cecily Brown paintings in an earlier post.

Woman as Landscape c. 1954-55. Oil and charcoal on canvas, 65 1/2 x 49 3/8 inches. Source.

Philip Guston (American 1913-1980). Guston was an abstract expressionist who shifted to cartoon-like figuration late in his career. Made twenty-two years apart, these paintings share a similar color palette, and related vocabulary of marks, making for an interesting comparison. The friend depicted in the 1978 painting is composer Morton Feldman, who composed For Philip Guston--a work for flute, percussion, and piano--in 1984.

The Street 1956. Oil on canvas, 76 x 71 1/2 inches. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Sue Williams (American b. 1954). I don't know if Sue Williams viewed Philip Guston's late work as a precedent to her paintings of the 1990s, but exaggerated, cartoon-like features are a prominent feature of that work. Here, vaguely figurative, intertwining forms seem to parody the allover patterning of abstract expressionism; it is like a more tongue-in-cheek version of Cecily Brown's abstractions.

Empathy Displacement/Loopy in Blue and Orange 1997. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 64 x 72 inches. Art Institute of Chicago.

Jenny Saville (British b. 1970). A British contemporary of Cecily Brown, Saville appears to agree with Willem de Kooning's quote about oil paint and flesh. Brown, Saville, and Sue Williams (previous post) took different approaches to depicting the human body, infusing their idiosyncratic imagery with political and social awareness.

These two artists studied together in graduate school, and both, at an early point in their careers, seem to have absorbed some of the ideas of painters like Cecily Brown and Jenny Saville.

Donnabelle Casis (American, born Philippines, 1969). Untitled 1999. Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches. Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington.

Asger Jorn (Danish 1914-1973). Looking at Meagan's paintings last week, I was struck by certain similarities between her work and that of members of the European CoBrA group, an affiliation of abstract painters and sculptors--from Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam--that was formed immediately after World War II and dissolved in 1951. In particular, I thought of Asger Jorn's use of vivid color and free paint application.

The last image, a found canvas modified by Jorn, is an early example of a practice that has become somewhat commonplace in recent years. Petzel gallery organized an exhibition titled Strategic Vandalism: The Legacy of Asger Jorn's Modification Paintings in 2019.

In the Beginning was the Image 1965. Oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

Green Ballet 1960. Oil on canvas, 57 x 79 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Untitled 1956-57. Oil on canvas, 55 1/2 x 43 3/8 inches. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice.

Lotti van der Gaag (Dutch 1923-1999). This CoBrA artist was primarily known as a sculptor, but I find the wild mark-making and hallucinatory imagery of her paintings to be quite compelling.

two women 1979. Oil on paper, 15 x 22 1/4 inches. Source.

Figures 1976. Acrylic on canvas, 22 1/4 x 25 1/2 inches. Source.

Figures 1983. Washed-out ink on paper, 9 3/4 x 12 3/4 inches. Source.

Pierre Alechinsky (Belgian b. 1927). Alechinsky is associated with various European art movements, and was a cofounder of CoBrA. In these examples, he favors a more transparent application of color, letting the white ground show through, giving the pigments a light, luminous appearance.

On Three Levels 1970. Acrylic on paper laid on canvas, 39 1/4 x 60 1/4 inches. Source.

The Payload 1966. Oil on canvas, 21 1/2 x 18 inches. Source.

Touch 1973. Watercolor on paper, 38 1/2 x 26 inches. Source.

Else Alfelt (Danish 1910-1974). Alfelt often painted abstract landscapes. I included her as the last of the CoBrA artists in this set because I appreciate the way the color appears to be structured around invisible linear elements--the gaps between planes of color. This gives the imagery the appearance of shattered glass, or possibly light shining through a faceted surface.

August Night, Dolomite 1951. Watercolor on paper, 12 1/4 x 19 3/4 inches. Source.

I decided to revisit Martha Jungwirth again this week, in order to compare her work with that of another painter, Raoul De Keyser. Both artists favor spare but emotive brush work and poetic imagery, and both create paintings that might pose a challenge to some viewers, due to their simplicity and unfinished appearance.

Martha Jungwirth (Austrian b. 1940). Untitled, from the series Australidelphia 2020. Oil on paper on canvas, 96 x 233 1/2 inches. Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain.

Untitled 2020. Oil on cardboard, painted on both sides; 28 1/2 x 41 inches. Source.

Raoul De Keyser (Belgian 1930-2012) Sky Blue 1991-92. Oil on canvas, 27 3/8 x 19 3/4 inches. Source.

Martin Puryear (American b. 1941). Judy told me about a traveling show of Martin Puryear's work that is currently on view at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. I'm always happy to have a reason to look at his work again.

Thicket 1990. Basswood and cypress, 67 x 62 x 17 inches. Seattle Art Museum.

Drawing for Untitled 2009. Compressed charcoal on ivory wove paper, 23 x 29 inches. Source.

Untitled 2009. Bronze, 9 3/4 x 11 x 4 inches. Source.

Untitled 2003. Charcoal and conté crayon on paper, 50 x 46 inches. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Face Down 2008. White bronze, 14 x 28 x 11 inches. Source.

Sherry Markovitz (American 1947-2025). I read about the passing of Sherry Markovitz earlier this week. Her meticulously beaded sculptures ranged from totemic animal heads to more abstracted forms, including looping linear forms like in the first two examples. I appreciated Dana's comparison of her beaded, pixilated surfaces to mosaic realized on a much smaller scale.

Field Notes 2019. Beads, wood, and wire; 55 x 25 x 8 inches. Source.

Planting 2019. Beads, wood, and wire; 38 x 20 x 3 inches. Source.

Hippo 2013. Beads, paper mâché, and mixed media; 19 x 13 x 10 1/4 inches. Source.

Martha Jungwirth (Austrian b. 1940). Katie brought this artist to my attention last week. When I searched her name after class, I realized I had saved an image of one of her paintings just a day or two before.

Jungwirth's layered blotches of unruly color, along with her propensity to leave large areas of her raw paper support marked by incidental drips and stains, align her with some of the Casualist painters we looked at a couple of weeks ago. These examples appear to be totally abstract, but some of her works also contain rudimentary figuration.

I truly love how she's managed to make such a personal style out of marks that, on the surface, appear to be unmannered and barely controlled.

Naxos (from the series Cyclades) 1995. Watercolor on antique ledger paper, 24 × 18 inches. Source.

Empty Quarter (from the series Yemen) 2005. Watercolor on handmade paper, 41 x 55 inches. Source.

Lee Bae (Korean b. 1956). Last Sunday, Kristin showed us an image of a work of art by Lee Bae, prompting many questions about his materials and techniques. I spent some time looking for answers.

That original image was a limited-edition print: the artist (or, in this case, the artist's gallery) took a photographic image of one of his paintings and reproduced it on paper using digital technology. Prints can make works of art more accessible to people with a modest income, especially when the artist's work has become collectible and expensive. For these posts, I'm focusing on the original works and not printed reproductions.

Although this artist makes a variety of different marks in his paintings, our primary question had to do with the long, straight-edged, looping lines of the Brushstroke paintings, like the first one seen here. He uses ink made of powdered charcoal--charcoal is the most significant material he uses throughout his work--and a broad, flat bristle brush with a very even tip. He has a collection of brushes in different widths, depending on how large he is working. The fineness of the bristles, and the very straight edge at the tip, allows him to deposit a very even width of wet ink.

Kristin asked about the length of his strokes--in the top Brushstroke, the entire looping mark appears to have been applied in one motion. However, I suspect he was able to lift his brush at the bottom and/or top of each vertical stroke--if you look closely, especially at the bottom of each loop, there appear to be darker places where he lifted his brush, reloaded it with ink, and carefully put it back down where he left off.

Brushstroke 2020. Charcoal ink on paper, 26 x 40 1/4 inches. Source.

Brushstroke 2021. Charcoal ink on paper, 16 1/2 x 12 inches. Source.

One of the artist's wide, flat bristle brushes. Source.

The artist loading his brush with charcoal ink. He appears to be using Talens brand #084 Quick-Drying Painting Medium as the vehicle for his homemade ink. Source.

Lee Bae (Korean b. 1956). The artist describes his work as having a performative element. Even though we, the audience, weren't necessarily present to witness the creation of these very long marks, their design and presentation contain elements of drama and mystery, invoking the theatrical. We're invited to contemplate their making, to ask all of the questions our group asked when we first saw his work--how? and with what? These large pieces, in particular, allow us to enter into the hypothetical space of a work of abstract art, simply by surrounding us with it.

Please note the very wide brush the artist is using in the second picture. These marks appear, to me, to have been made in stages, with occasional pauses to reload the brush with ink.

Brushstroke I 2024. Installation at Fondazione Wilmotte, Venice, Italy. Source.

Executing Brushstroke I 2024 at Fondazione Wilmotte, Venice, Italy. Source.

Brushstroke 2024. Charcoal ink on paper, 102 x 709 inches. Source.