New acquisition: Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown’s paintings and drawings evocatively examine figuration, memory and abstraction. Brown began her “Shipwreck” series in 2016, inspired by maritime paintings of Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Gericault. “A Storm at Sea” hauntingly recalls Delacroix’s 1840 painting “The Shipwreck of Don Juan,” which depicts the moment in Lord Byron’s poem when Don Juan and the surviving crew members reckon with their fate while lost at sea.

In Brown’s painting, the foreground is impressed with velvety charcoal, guiding the viewers to the rolling waves overtaking the helm of the boat. The fluid outlines of the figures dissolve into the receding background. Only two figures remain fully decipherable in the foreground –– one with his back turned to the viewer at center –– both with heads hung low as their bodies lean into the disappearing edge of the boat. Brown continuously returns to paintings over a period of years. As she reworks them, she relies on the gestural memories of the original works to layer new forms, instilling them with a deeper subliminal understanding of the imagery.

Brown’s powerful imagery eerily illuminates present-day struggles of refugees seeking freedom through sea travel. Begun at the height of the 2016 migrant crisis in the United States, her images also remind us of the oversaturation of photographs of these failed sea voyages in our modern news media. Brown employs the figure and boat to contend with the long histories of maritime disaster and grapple with her understanding of contemporary tragedy and loss.

“A Storm at Sea” is currently on view in the permanent collection galleries alongside another brilliant figurative abstraction inspired by a historical work of art, Elaine de Kooning’s “Bacchus #81.”

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