Glenn Brown

Patrick Painter Inc., Santa Monica
Sale: Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, Contemporary Art (part I), 17 May 2007, Lot 26
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Santa Monica, Patrick Painter Inc., Glenn Brown, 2001

Valérie Breuvard, Ed., Vitamin P. New Perspectives in Painting, London 2002, p. 50, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonalities are brighter and more saturated in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals a small and extremely faint spot of transparent media accretion towards the centre of the bottom right quadrant, and a few further spots to the bottom left quadrant. Close inspection reveals a small and stable network of hairline drying cracks to the bottom right corner which follow the grain of the wood panel. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Revealing astonishing heights of technical virtuosity and astounding painterly skill, I do not feel embarrassed at attempting to express sadness and loneliness is a superb example of Glenn Brown’s highly distinctive corpus. Ostensibly depicting a still life subject - the particular source image for this work is Vincent Van Gogh's Bouquet of Flowers from 1890 - Brown here twists the portrayal of a vase of flowers far beyond conventional representation to create a nightmarish version of the traditional subject. Magnificently macabre, Brown’s interpretation resolutely defies any attempt at ordered categorisation: neither fully abstract nor orthodoxly representational, the work acts as a fascinating meditation on the renewed potential and innovations possible within Twenty First Century painting. Muted pink and grey pigments combine with deep green in a curious travesty of the vivid hues found within the natural world, whilst similar tones decorate the simple vase and dominate the empty background. The resulting image is one that renders null and void the ancient association between blooms and fruitfulness: instead, through its almost elegiac portrayal of decaying beauty, I do not feel embarrassed at attempting to express sadness and loneliness arguably achieves commonality with the Vanitas connotations of Seventeenth Century Dutch still-life paintings. Yet Brown layers another level of complexity into the composition through the inclusion of two disturbingly eye-like shapes in the midst of the foliage, causing the image to take on the appearance of a hidden portrait recalling the grotesque genre. The lengthy title of the work takes on new meaning once the 'face' is glimpsed, imbuing the image with an element of the abject and further personifying the profusion of leaves and flowers. Through this uncanny mingling of genres, Brown questions the very nature of perception and observation itself, causing us to reassess the way in which we view seemingly familiar objects in the world around us.

Brown’s extraordinary paintings are inspired by blockbuster Old Masters such as Rembrandt, Fragonard, and in the case of the present work, Vincent Van Gogh. As illuminated by I do not feel embarrassed… Brown’s remarkable technique effectively parodies the powerful brushstrokes of the latter artist, producing a work that acts almost as a pastiche of art historical precedent, conveying an obsessive hyped-up homage to the virtuoso brushstrokes of the Dutch master. Embellishing upon Van Gogh's original painterly gesture, Brown creates intricate swirling and nebulous brushstroke patterns that are luminous in colour; the result imparts a sense of manic, über perfection. As articulated by the artist, there is an "almost irksome sense of detail in them… You don’t quite know what you’re looking at: you see brush marks, but they’re not ‘real’ brush marks – they’re fake in one sense” (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, London and New York, Gagosian Gallery, Glenn Brown, Three Exhibitions, 2004, 2007 and 2009, p. 70). Indeed, the perfectly smooth surface of this painting is a masterpiece of painterly control and an extraordinary triumph of illusionistic splendour. In its art historical allusion to Northern still-life and hidden portraiture as channelled through the artist's dialogue with a kind of photographic painterly perfection I do not feel embarrassed at attempting to express sadness and loneliness is a work of truly astonishing imagination and powerful expression.