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拍品專文
Staring from the canvas and confronting the viewer is the face of a 17th Century boy. Yet the brushwork is somehow wrong, is swirling in the wrong sense. This is not a painting from the 1600s, but instead some strange modern re-imagination. Despite the smooth surface of the picture, a trompe-l'oeil effect deftly conveys the false sense of modern impasto, of vigorous brushstrokes that are neither present on this canvas nor in the original. There is a strange play of honesty in this work. Its clear photo-realist origins lend it a sense of honesty. It depicts what it intends to depict. And yet it clearly fails to be what at first it appears to be.
In Disco, painted in 1997-98, it is not only the boy but also the painting of the boy that is the subject matter. Brown has taken a reproduction of a painting as his source image and has painstakingly committed it to canvas through the slow and steady application of oils. The craftsmanship is formidable and allows Brown to explode much of the nature of painting, to expose strange falsenesses in his predecessors, to undermine our notions of art, of aesthetics, of inspiration, of originality and of taste. The jarring manner in which his shimmering brushstrokes convey a sense of spontaneity, while also revealing the photo-realist foundations of the work, throws into question the idea of artistic skill, by both undermining and perversely celebrating Brown's own achievements as a painter. This is a work of illusion, it is a false note, and in this way it blows apart all the notions of what a painting should or can be this is a Post-Modern interrogation of art.
The Post-Modernism of Disco is all the more apparent in the games of appropriation that have led to its inception. This is not a pure picture, but is instead a picture of a picture of a picture, lending a sense of remove. We are not only centuries away from the sitter, but are also separated by layers of representation that increase the sense of distance. Discussing his paintings, Brown discussed this effect by stating that because "I'm distanced, I can let my imagination run rife, which is why they end up having exotic titles, from films and horror and narcissism, they become symbols for humanity, monsters, a sign for a sense of being rather than a specific person" (Brown, quoted in 'Glenn Brown Interviewed by Marcelo Spinelli', pp. 5-17 in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Hexham and London, 1996, p. 7).
In Disco, painted in 1997-98, it is not only the boy but also the painting of the boy that is the subject matter. Brown has taken a reproduction of a painting as his source image and has painstakingly committed it to canvas through the slow and steady application of oils. The craftsmanship is formidable and allows Brown to explode much of the nature of painting, to expose strange falsenesses in his predecessors, to undermine our notions of art, of aesthetics, of inspiration, of originality and of taste. The jarring manner in which his shimmering brushstrokes convey a sense of spontaneity, while also revealing the photo-realist foundations of the work, throws into question the idea of artistic skill, by both undermining and perversely celebrating Brown's own achievements as a painter. This is a work of illusion, it is a false note, and in this way it blows apart all the notions of what a painting should or can be this is a Post-Modern interrogation of art.
The Post-Modernism of Disco is all the more apparent in the games of appropriation that have led to its inception. This is not a pure picture, but is instead a picture of a picture of a picture, lending a sense of remove. We are not only centuries away from the sitter, but are also separated by layers of representation that increase the sense of distance. Discussing his paintings, Brown discussed this effect by stating that because "I'm distanced, I can let my imagination run rife, which is why they end up having exotic titles, from films and horror and narcissism, they become symbols for humanity, monsters, a sign for a sense of being rather than a specific person" (Brown, quoted in 'Glenn Brown Interviewed by Marcelo Spinelli', pp. 5-17 in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Hexham and London, 1996, p. 7).