Cecily Brown at Blenheim Palace
By Polina Epinatieva
Cecily Brown in her studio in 2020. Image courtesy of the Blenheim Art Foundation and Tom Lindboe.
The post-pandemic art world has been slowly adapting to the new normal, with reduced audiences, strict safety measures and historically-significant shows, such as the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, being postponed. However, against all odds, offline exhibitions are making a comeback, which is a true sign of nothing less than the art scene’s steady journey on the path towards recovery. In the past few months, organic ties, which connected artists, audiences, artworks and exhibition spaces, have veered towards the online and today the appetite to experience real-life exhibitions and shows is as strong as ever. For a true art enthusiast, one of the most anticipated shows of the year that has opened at Blenheim Palace should be at the top of the bucket list. Having not exhibited in the U.K. for the past 15 years, Cecily Brown, an extraordinary British artist has made a grandiose homecoming. What also makes this exhibition special is a revelation of an entirely new body of work in a medium of contemporary painting.
‘Hunt with Nature Morte and Blenheim Spaniel’ (2019). Image courtesy of the Blenheim Art Foundation and Tom Lindboe
The Blenheim Foundation is known for challenging conventional aesthetics of the ‘white cube’ exhibition space and for showcasing works by the most relevant artists of our time, those who are not restricted by traditional thinking and cliché styles but are rather mavericks in the field. Amongst the artists that have exhibited their work at this landmark location are Maurizio Cattelan, Ai Weiwei and Michelangelo Pistoletto. Despite having the status of one of the most historic residences in England and being the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire is adapting with the change in times and is playing a major role in supporting and popularising 20th and 21st century culture.
‘Hunt After Frans Snyders’ (2019) @ Cecily Brown.
This exhibition is one of a kind opportunity to view Cecily Brown’s swirling abstraction paintings in the unique setting of the UNESCO’s World Heritage 18th century palace. Brown is a remarkable figure in the contemporary art scene. Her work has been influenced by renowned Western artists of all times: from Italian Renaissance and works of Paolo Veronese, through to French impressionism and Edgar Degas; to abstract expressionists including Willem de Kooning and Oscar Kokoschka. Cecily Brown’s ability to draw inspiration from a wide range of artistic periods and techniques has helped her shape her own unique style, which makes her works instantly recognisable. Brown’s continuous strokes, expressive application and vivid colours, together with an ability to freely shift between abstract and figurative modes are key to her artistic triumph. She often explores themes of sexuality, body, nature and history, while also engages in removing conventional subjects away from their expected contexts. Cecily Brown’s works were exhibited at the most prominent art institutions worldwide, including Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark (2018), Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, England (2017), Museum of Fine Arts Boston (2006), Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain, topped with numerous shows at the Gagosian Gallery, Thomas Dane Gallery and Paula Cooper Gallery.
‘There’ll Always be an England’ (2019). Image courtesy of the Artist and Genevieve Hanson.
Cecily Brown’s exhibition at Blenheim Palace features 24 previously unseen paintings, two monotypes, five drawings and Brown’s first-ever textile work, a handwoven rug. All of the works were created in response to the Palace’s rich history and Spencer-Churchill family’s renowned collection of art. Through her works, which are contrastingly displayed within the historic interiors, paintings and objects that offer a more hopeful and idealised reflection on national life during the Colonial Era, Brown demonstrates her vision of a broken and divided England.
‘There’ll be bluebirds’ (left) and ‘Spot the Spaniel’ (2019) @ Cecily Brown.
As one enters the Palace, it becomes impossible to turn a blind eye to an abundance of hunting scenes on the walls. They unobtrusively demonstrate the connection between English nobility’s favourite pastime and Spencer-Churchill family's military background as hunting for centuries was deemed to provide training for war by teaching weapon usage and tracking skills. In Brown’s work, animal imagery has been a recurrent subject, however as an animal-lover and vegetarian, the artist strongly criticises the innate violence and traumatism of these countryside entertainments. She drastically changes the subject matter of the Blenheim collection paintings and voices her contemporary perspective and condemnation on this truly British, yet old-fashioned sport. Brown’s ‘Hunt with Nature Morte and Blenheim Spaniel’, ‘The Calls of the Hunting Horn’ and ‘Hunt After Frans Snyders’ are calling for appreciation of beauty and dynamism of the animals involved. The presence of traditional British subjects, like the hunt, in artist’s work for Blenheim has been done purposefully, in order for visitors to take a closer look, to momentarily assume that Brown’s work belongs there, but then to realise how the vision is distorted.
Coats of Arms, heraldic imagery, infinite artworks depicting battlefields and martial motifs, as well as Palace’s architecture and decorations, tell us the story of Britain as a military power in all its glory. In response, Brown has created a series of battle paintings of her own, a new genre within her work that helped the artist to question established idealised histories of the British Empire. Throughout the exhibition, Brown aims to challenge established taught histories and their British-centric bias. She reveals her concerns about the future of a great nation and its place in the world, specifically today, at the time when the glory of the violent past seems to be the only point of pride for Britain. ‘There’ll always be an England’ and ‘Battles were meant to be painted’ are the works that initiated Brown’s series of battle paintings. In both pieces, the artist returns to pure abstraction and works primarily with colour rather than line, using various shades of green, together with red for blood, poppies, soldiers’ coats and the English flag.
‘The Triumph of Death’ (2019). Image courtesy of the Blenheim Art Foundation and Tom Lindboe.
By the time audience becomes familiar with the artist, with her critique of the cruel yet still practiced British traditions like hunting, she then opens up her heart with the feeling of peace and love for the tranquil and picturesque English countryside. Through ‘There’ll be bluebirds’ in First State Room and ‘Shepherd’s Delight’ in the Long Library, Brown illustrates strong nostalgia for the simpler, utopian times of her English childhood. She is longing for ‘England’s green and pleasant Land’ as once described by William Blake, that she has been away from for so long.
For the grand finale of the show, Brown has once again allowed figuration to dominate. ‘The Triumph of Death’ is her largest and most ambitious work to date, which was painted in four parts and assembled for the first time at the Palace, its scale cannot leave anyone indifferent. The work was made with reference to a nation experiencing much turbulence. However, at the time when the U.K. is facing the devastating economic and social consequences of Covid-19 pandemic, Brown’s work seems to foreshadow a catastrophe of a new scale. ‘The Triumph of Death’ takes inspiration from a 15th-century fresco with the same name by an anonymous artist, which is located in Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, Sicily. Brown has decided to replace original figures of the Italian Renaissance with a different set of characters, based on Blenheim and England, on its past and present. A galloping skeletal horse and its rider instantly come to the fore of the work, while the viewer’s attention soon shifts to the soldiers and hunters in the red coats trampled to death in a field covered in Remembrance Day poppies. On the right, noble ladies and gentlemen are sipping champagne in their fox furs and displaying their ignorance to the chaos happening outside of their elitist bubble. Brown has once again defied the British country’s utopian fantasies and presented a hallucinatory, swirling apocalypse that seems to be looming over our society, which will fade into the abyss of history if we stand strong and most importantly stand together.
Cecily Brown at Blenheim Palace is on view through February 7, 2021.