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拍品专文
A riot of colour and texture, Twice Told Tales I is an intoxicating canvas from Cecily Brown’s breakthrough period. Painted in 1998, and held in the same private collection since 2000, it captures the electrifying palette and enigmatic flesh-like forms that came to define her practice after her arrival in New York a few years earlier. Brief visions of intertwined limbs and bodies emerge from a tapestry of peach, fuchsia, yellow and crimson. Shapes morph and mutate through the artist’s rich, tactile brushwork. The surface appears to undulate, its mercurial drama suspended in a constant state of flux. The overall impression is one of translucency, like light breaking through a stained-glass window. Twice Told Tales I was painted the year of Brown’s pivotal second solo show High Society at Jeffrey Deitch’s Projects Gallery in Manhattan, and has much in common with the 1997-1998 masterpiece of the same name. With examples held in The Broad, Los Angeles, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and Tate, London, the artist’s works from this period carved out thrilling new territory for abstraction, propelling her onto the global stage.
The work’s title likely came from the 1963 horror film Twice Told Tales, starring Vincent Price and based upon a short story collection by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In tune with this suggestion of repeated or reimagined narratives, it is the first of a trio of paintings by the same name. Many of Brown’s canvases created during this period take their titles from films, which she often found in Halliwell’s Film Guide. Brown is famous for her eclectic influences and also finds inspiration in the names of books, songs, and pubs, among countless other sources. Whatever their origin, these titles are not meant to offer clues to the image at hand. Rather, Brown hopes the words will allow her paintings to unfold multiple interpretations and associations. Indeed, her art is replete with marks that gesture towards other images, be those scenes in television programmes, Sienese frescoes or Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, a copy of which she has long displayed in her studio.
Having grown up in London, and completed her studies at the Slade School of Art, Brown moved to New York in 1994 in part to escape the weight of the British art world. At the time, the London scene was dominated by an anti-painting attitude espoused primarily by the Young British Artists. She greatly admired the work of Francis Bacon, and had spent hours poring over the works of the Old Masters. Brown observed that her enduring desire to paint the human figure was seen as somewhat ‘perverse’: ‘I was ashamed of my pleasure in painting, my predilection for emotionally charged subjects, and for my love of dead painters’ (‘Happy Days are Where, Again?’, Flash Art, no. 200, May-June 1998).
In New York, however, the medium was experiencing a revival of sorts, and Brown exulted in its possibilities. In 1998, she featured on the cover of Flash Art in an image by Damian Loeb, securing her place—according to editor Helena Kontova—as ‘the new face of American painting’. The magazine featured an article written by Brown herself: in it, she enthused ‘This is an intoxicating time to be painting, and New York an exhilarating and sympathetic climate; the mood is generous and open and eclectic’ (ibid.). For the first time, Brown felt a connection to the art made by her peers, a cohort which included John Currin and Rita Ackermann, and her work was enthusiastically received following its early presentations at Deitch Projects, which catapulted her career to new heights. During these months, Brown moved away from her earlier depictions of cartoonish rabbits and instead began painting teeming bodies whose fluctuating forms recalled the work of Willem de Kooning. Like her Abstract Expressionist predecessor, Brown’s works from this period are driven by colour, particularly the flesh tones, pinks, and reds that fill Twice Told Tales I.
‘I think that’s what I call painterly—the paint itself telling the story,’ Brown has said (in conversation with C. Martin, Cecily Brown, New York, 2020, p. 38). In her studio in New York, she regularly works on multiple canvases simultaneously, and as a result, the images often speak to one another. Marks are mirrored and colours repeat themselves, but the throughlines are not always obvious. Indeed, while Brown always begins a painting with a specific motif in mind, she is consciously constructing an image that leaves this initial inspiration behind. Enchanted by the materiality of paint itself, her practice captures the medium’s physical qualities through gestural, looping brushwork and sensual surfaces. Works such as Twice Told Tales I evince this dedication to painting, which, Brown says, ‘is the highest form of hope’ (in conversation with H-U. Obrist, Cecily Brown: Picture Making, exh. cat., Serpentine Gallery, London, 2026, p. 76).
The work’s title likely came from the 1963 horror film Twice Told Tales, starring Vincent Price and based upon a short story collection by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In tune with this suggestion of repeated or reimagined narratives, it is the first of a trio of paintings by the same name. Many of Brown’s canvases created during this period take their titles from films, which she often found in Halliwell’s Film Guide. Brown is famous for her eclectic influences and also finds inspiration in the names of books, songs, and pubs, among countless other sources. Whatever their origin, these titles are not meant to offer clues to the image at hand. Rather, Brown hopes the words will allow her paintings to unfold multiple interpretations and associations. Indeed, her art is replete with marks that gesture towards other images, be those scenes in television programmes, Sienese frescoes or Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, a copy of which she has long displayed in her studio.
Having grown up in London, and completed her studies at the Slade School of Art, Brown moved to New York in 1994 in part to escape the weight of the British art world. At the time, the London scene was dominated by an anti-painting attitude espoused primarily by the Young British Artists. She greatly admired the work of Francis Bacon, and had spent hours poring over the works of the Old Masters. Brown observed that her enduring desire to paint the human figure was seen as somewhat ‘perverse’: ‘I was ashamed of my pleasure in painting, my predilection for emotionally charged subjects, and for my love of dead painters’ (‘Happy Days are Where, Again?’, Flash Art, no. 200, May-June 1998).
In New York, however, the medium was experiencing a revival of sorts, and Brown exulted in its possibilities. In 1998, she featured on the cover of Flash Art in an image by Damian Loeb, securing her place—according to editor Helena Kontova—as ‘the new face of American painting’. The magazine featured an article written by Brown herself: in it, she enthused ‘This is an intoxicating time to be painting, and New York an exhilarating and sympathetic climate; the mood is generous and open and eclectic’ (ibid.). For the first time, Brown felt a connection to the art made by her peers, a cohort which included John Currin and Rita Ackermann, and her work was enthusiastically received following its early presentations at Deitch Projects, which catapulted her career to new heights. During these months, Brown moved away from her earlier depictions of cartoonish rabbits and instead began painting teeming bodies whose fluctuating forms recalled the work of Willem de Kooning. Like her Abstract Expressionist predecessor, Brown’s works from this period are driven by colour, particularly the flesh tones, pinks, and reds that fill Twice Told Tales I.
‘I think that’s what I call painterly—the paint itself telling the story,’ Brown has said (in conversation with C. Martin, Cecily Brown, New York, 2020, p. 38). In her studio in New York, she regularly works on multiple canvases simultaneously, and as a result, the images often speak to one another. Marks are mirrored and colours repeat themselves, but the throughlines are not always obvious. Indeed, while Brown always begins a painting with a specific motif in mind, she is consciously constructing an image that leaves this initial inspiration behind. Enchanted by the materiality of paint itself, her practice captures the medium’s physical qualities through gestural, looping brushwork and sensual surfaces. Works such as Twice Told Tales I evince this dedication to painting, which, Brown says, ‘is the highest form of hope’ (in conversation with H-U. Obrist, Cecily Brown: Picture Making, exh. cat., Serpentine Gallery, London, 2026, p. 76).