Cecily Brown: the British painter with the New York art world at her feet

This article was first published by The Guardian.

It’s like 1967,” said a visitor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as artists, writers, friends and art patrons assembled to celebrate British painter Cecily Brown, who came to Manhattan in the early 1990s and was this month gifted a “career survey” at the civilisation-spanning institution. The last time this accolade was offered to a living British artist was Lucian Freud in the mid-90s.

The reception that followed the Brown opening was described by one New York critic as an “oestrogen-fuelled, generational-shifting thrill, artistically and socially”. An early review noted that Brown “makes everything old new again”.

Her figurative abstractions tell stories, often many at a time, in ways that activate every inch of canvas; the work on show in Death and the Maid, which runs until 3 December, was energised by the attention, and returns the favour. “It’s beyond a dream,” Brown told the Observer after the opening last week. “It feels like boasting to even talk about it.”

@UK_ICOM