Glenn Brown

Nausea, 2008
Oil on Panel 155 x 120 cm
Tate Liverpool
17 March 2009

It is always strange visiting a gallery for the first time because the environment has to be absorbed as well as the work. This was no exception and I was lucky to be able to spend a few hours with the paintings, most of the time as the only visitor in a particular room. The show is impressive and the way the work was hung brought out some interesting relationships and conversations between them. Particularly impressive were room 3 with five paintings based on a piece by Frank Auerbach and room 7 with three paintings of tragicomic, anthropomorphic blobs, namely The Hinterland 2006, Seventeen Seconds 2005 and International Velvet 2004.

Whilst there were many paintings I could have selected on the basis of technique, composition or colour, I have chosen one that sums up the entire show in just the title, Nausea. Looking at Brown’s paintings en masse or indeed too closely, nausea is the sensation I feel. In fact nausea is not a sickness, but rather a symptom of other conditions which may not be related to the stomach but trigger the response.

Interestingly, nausea is often indicative of an underlying condition of melancholia and it is well known that Jean Paul Sartre novel Nausea was originally called Melencholia, but the editor changed it. In Sartre’s existentialist novel, the protagonist, Roquentin, suffers from ennui and has random and unexpected bouts of nausea which he finally gets used to and deals with as he becomes aware that there isn’t any Meaning to life, just pure existence.

Brown’s starting point is the same source that Francis Bacon used for Head VI; a reproduction of Velázquez’s portrait of "Pope Innocent X". He then not only distorts the image by rotating it 180 degrees, in the manner of Georg Baselitz, but crops the head, adds the border from the printed page or postcard as an integral part of the painting and a flat pink circular “moon”. This is the first direct reference to the printed source of Brown’s images, and utilises the early strategies employed by Gerhard Richter to destroy the illusion of his photorealism by cropping the source so that the white margins (and sometimes text) were visible, whilst portions of the image were lost. The pink spot may be a reference to Sigmar Polke paintings of the same era.

Add to these knowing, but appropriate references, Brown’s swirling painted ‘brush marks’ and the livid colour scheme, and the result is an image of death and decay. The painting coldly asserts, through the motif of the distorted pontiff, that there isn’t a Spiritual Essence in the Universe. All we have is the despair at the pointlessness of one’s own existence, and if one uses the analogy of looking too long or too closely, for thinking too hard or too rationally, sensations of disgust and nausea. It is hard to summarise it better than Bataille’s 1958 review of Satre’s literary work “the entire novelistic work of Sartre seems haunted by an obsession with a rotten decomposed mouldy world one full of sickening secretions” [1]. The same could be said for Brown’s obsessions in his paintings.

[1] Menninghaus, Winfried Disgust: the theory and history of a strong sensation SUNY Press 2003 p356

©blackdog 2009

Glenn Brown

Architecture and Morality, 2004
Oil on prepared wooden panel 140 x 98 cm

Serpentine Gallery, London
8th October 2004

This was a really influential show for me even though I had already seen his work before when he was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2000. It wasn't that the work was substantially different from that included in the Turner, but more that I had developed and matured as an artist and got a lot more from seeing the paintings. Having said the work was similar, the piece I have chosen was painted after the earlier exhibition and is a fine example of melanchoilc surrealism.

He is perhaps best known for his portraiture, and this is indeed a classic ‘head’ and shoulders portrait of a man, but in true surrealist fashion the head has been replaced with a bunch of chrysanthemums that are past their best. The title is from an album made by the “new romantic” synth band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark in 1981 and through this association, a melancholic aura is projected onto the painting. Marcel Duchamp called the modern title an “invisible colour" and I agree with Alison Gingeras that Brown uses his titles as a way of wresting the appropriated work(s) to his own agenda[1].

This, as is most of his work, is appropriated from the work of others, but is not a direct copy. In this case the elements from two paintings, chrysanthemum heads from a Fantin Latour still life and a man’s body reworked from a portrait by Lucien Freud. Brown asserts that he has a vague idea at the outset and then searches through books and catalogues to find a painting that fits the idea. He works from the reproduction, possibly manipulating it with computer software.

He tends to use yet another, perhaps totally unrelated, painting as the source of the palette – in this case I don’t know that specific source. Green grey background. Whites with cold blues in the shirt, whites with faded yellows for the flowers, dark green and browns for the stems. Small flash of yellow on the sleeve of the shirt.

Essentially his work is a trompe l’oeil, in that he paints paint that has had the life sucked out of it through photography and reproduction and reinvigorates it so that it looks like it has depth and texture! His painting simulates rich impasto marks, but is in fact absolutely, totally flat. To achieve this he uses tiny sable hair brushes to apply swirling varying patches of colour in the desired colour scheme. Despite the flatness there is a unique character to his brushwork (does the colour and placement of these marks come from some kind of computer filter or does he draw them up beforehand?)

This idea of painting paint, could be linked to Roy Lichtenstein – automating production of the painterly gesture. According to Brown this erasure of the Expressionist gesture is linked to Gerhard Richter’s theory that painting and photography are now forever linked. Brown cites his early influences as David Salle, Julian Schnabel and Sigmar Polke but quickly moves on to express admiration of Picasso and Matisse for their use of colour, form and contradictory use of space.[2]

Glenn Brown studied at the same art college as myself and he has a retrospective coming up this year from 20th February until 10th May at Tate Liverpool .

[1] 'Glenn Brown', Gingeras, Alison M., Serpentine Gallery London 2004, pp19-20
[2] GB in interview with Rochelle Steiner 'Glenn Brown', Gingeras, Alison M., Serpentine Gallery London 2004, pp95