‘Almost every time a painting show happens, or a young painter makes a splash – in the market as much as on a canvas – someone crows about a return to painting. As if, in a moment of blinding revelation, the entire art world had come to its senses: what fools we’ve been! Painting! Now we don’t have to worry about all that impenetrable contemporary art rubbish! Sanity regained.’
Adrian Searle, Art Critic, The Guardian, Tuesday June 28, 2005. ( see full review here)
I went the private view of Cecily Brown last night at Modern Art Oxford. And I for one thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite Adrian Searle’s (a wonderful art critic) take that we should be careful not to get over-excited every time a genuine painter gets a contemporary art billing in a major museum, I was just so relieved to see someone who was exploring the stuff of paint in a sophisticated yet uncomplicated way. There are no post modern gimmicks, no wry asides within the images. They are luxuriously painted, and, I would expect, would have been dismissed had they been painted by a man for being exploitative and misogynistic due to their highly sexual subject matter. But that is the stuff for a bigger debate than my feeble brain can cope with at this hour in the morning.
The opening itself was good, and I bumped into and old acquaintance and artist from Aberdeen, Andy Stenhouse, who is now living and working in Oxford. It was nice to talk in a familiar vernacular about things which matter and don’t matter! Tracy Emin was there! I should have had the brass neck to go and speak to her (well she is a single girl), but I did not. I actually loved her recent show at the white cube in London and have been fascinated by her weekly column in the Independent (alas not published online). So it would have been nice just have said hello…
2 days until Cyprus…