A Fearless Feminist: Cecily Brown at the DMA

Amy Bishop·
Dallas/Ft WorthVisual Art
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When British-born artist Cecily Brown landed in the New York art scene in the mid-1990s, conventional painting had taken a backseat to other less conventional practices of creating art. Conceptual installations and video content, for example, were trending. The transgressive art movement was producing provocative subject matter reflecting angsty societal and global turmoil. For a while, painting almost seemed a little too orthodox for the art capital of the world, though ‘orthodox’ isn’t a word typically associated with Cecily Brown’s works.

“But she is very much a painter’s painter,” says Katherine Brodbeck, Dallas Museum of Art’s Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art. “She really believes in the medium. Now, we see painting all the time, so it’s important to remember that context about how she was a little out of step with the times – but It’s a very important voice for seeing what’s still radical about painting.”

Cecily Brown: Themes and Variations, on view at the Dallas Museum of Art through Feb. 9, 2025, explores 33 works by the painter as a mid-career retrospective, ranging from a 1996 work created during her meteoric rise to fame in New York, to a work created as recently as last year. Brodbeck describes Brown’s style as dancing between abstraction and figuration. “Her work is very layered. When you first look at it, there are a lot of abstract elements and layers of paint. But the closer you look at it, there’s always kind of a figure emerging.”

In many ways, the exhibition serves as a survey of Brown as a feminist artist. Part of what catapulted her into prominence early in her career was her fearlessness of including sexual and erotic content in her work. Often, it’s a response to art history’s classical masterpieces by male artists and the voyeuristic depictions of female nudes. “But as a female artist who really owns her sexuality, I think she brings a really unique spin on these tropes,” Brodbeck explains.

Brown also tends to give wry nods to 17th and 18th century Dutch and Flemish still lifes, noted for portraying sumptuous spreads of food and drink. Other artists of the era would depict spoils of the hunt – carcasses of woodland animals splayed on a table, no doubt awaiting to be defeathered, butchered, or both. Brown, who’s a vegetarian, works this symbolism into Saboteur Four Times, which Brodbeck has chosen as the exhibition’s introductory piece. Three thematic sections follow, beginning with In the Night Garden, comprised primarily of works Brown painted during a time when she was heavily interested in art from the opulent Rococo era. Girl on a Swing references both Francisco de Goya’s The Swing, as well as a painting of the same title by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. What may seem to be playful and flirtatious imagery today was actually brimming with erotic and voyeuristic connotations at the time. “I think she was subtly pointing to how misogynistic most of art history is,” Brodbeck says. “And so, there are several works that both play with this kind of Rococo palette.”

The Sirens and Shipwrecks section exhibits Brown’s practice of addressing current events through the context of art history. During the 2016 migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, the world watched as images of Syrian refugees on rafts flashed on their TV screens, often accompanied by stories of death and tragedy. She found herself drawn to depictions of shipwrecks in art during this time, especially to Theodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, depicting the notorious shipwreck off the coast of West Africa in 1816.

“She does these deep dives, where she’ll be inspired by something she sees in art history, but it brings to mind something in current events,” Brodbeck says, adding that they’ve created a whole series of Brown’s works based on the motif of shipwrecks within this section. In that same vein, the exhibition includes Brown’s response to the fascination with sirens and nymphs in art history. “Both of them are very sexist tropes,” Brodbeck explains, alluding to the mythological sea goddesses and evil seductresses who would lure sailors to their death. “There are some really wonderful drawings that she did on these two themes.”

The back gallery contains the third section, Painting Flesh, which brings together some of Brown’s earliest works with her most recent. The Splendid Table refers back to the exhibition’s introductory piece, inspired by a still life by 17th century Flemish painter Frans Snyders. Brown incorporates her recurring motif of bunnies here; in this case, they’re stretched on the table, implying that the banquet table is a metaphor for the bedroom. This section contains the exhibition’s more carnal subject matter, such as the coupling of a man and woman, male nudes, and a woman pleasuring herself. “So again, it’s kind of a different type of depiction that you see,” Brodbeck says. “Instead of this very passive woman who’s there for the male gaze, she’s kind of in her own world, in the throes of pleasure.”

The bonus to the exhibition being held in an encyclopedic museum such as the DMA is the opportunity for visitors to visit the European galleries on site and see the source material for many of Brown’s works. “Her interest in seeing how what’s been depicted for hundreds of years in art history, might still have a relevance in our lives today,” Brodbeck explains. “That is probably my top takeaway.”

—AMY BISHOP

Amy Bishop

Amy Bishop is the host of At Work with Amy on Classical 101.1 WRR FM in Dallas, where she also serves as Director of Marketing and Promotions.