GLENN BROWN

← Artist Page

Selected Works

Stuck in the Milky Way, 2021

India ink and acrylic on polyester film over board, in artist’s frame
50 x 40 x 6 cm.; 19 3/4 x 15 3/4 x 2 3/8 in.
Photo: Lucy Dawkins

Black Ships Ate the Sky, 2020

oil and acrylic on panel
216 x 144 cm.; 85 1/8 x 56 3/4 in.
Photo: def image

In The Eyes of a Dancing Beggar, 2020

oil and acrylic over fibreglass, plastic, stainless steel, velvet, mdf and plexiglass
sculpture: 145 x 32.5 x 30 cm.; 57 1/8 x 12 3/4 x 11 3/4 in.
vitrine: 1550 x 425 x 355 cm.; 610 1/4 x 167 3/8 x 139 3/4 in.
Photo: def image

Bring on the Headless Horses, 2020

oil and acrylic on panel
200 x 141 cm.; 78 3/4 x 55 1/2 in.
Photo: def image

Drawing 2 (after Delacroix/Raphael), 2019

acrylic paint on polyester film over cardboard, in artist’s frame
109.2 x 94 x 6 cm.; 43 x 37 x 2 3/8 in.
Photo: def image

Obnoxiously Sexual, 2019

oil paint and acrylic over bronze and marble, corian and steel table, vitrine
sculpture: 107 x 60 x 62 cm.; 42 1/8 x 23 5/8 in.
table and vitrine: 212 x 74 x 74 cm.; 83 1/2 x 29 1/8 x 29 1/8 in.
Photo: def image

‘In his sculptural works, some long and thin, others chunky, Glenn Brown’s deceiving pictorial touch is this time freed from flatness and employs heavy paste. As gluttonous and rasping as one could wish, it forms mounds of coloured skin with truly arrogant boldness. Applied to a plaster base, it advances, lengthens and stretches out in the space like overly heavy tree branches or an excessively light hat-feather. The sculpted, exaggeratedly smothered paint threatens to disintegrate, all the more so as it never seems to be completely dry or hard, and even rather soft.’

J. Lavrador, ‘Glenn Brown: L’etincelante et horrible claret / Dazzling, Ghastly Clarity’, in Glenn Brown, exh.cat., Arles: Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, 2016, p. 28

A new, better, faster breed, 2019

oil and acrylic paint on panel, in three parts, in artist’s frame
each panel: 122.5 x 97.5 x 4.2 cm.; 48 1/4 x 38 3/8 x 1 5/8 in.

Fat Boy (1945), 2018

Indian ink and acrylic paint on film over panel, frame
sheet: 71.1 x 55.1 cm.; 28 x 21 3/4 in.
130 x 103 x 6 cm.; 51 1/8 x 40 1/2 x 2 3/8 in. (framed)
Photo: Mike Bruce

Bread and Circus, 2018

acrylic paint on panel, frame
panel: 84.9 x 69 cm.; 33 3/8 x 27 1/8 in.
125 x 106 x 9.8 cm.; 49 1/4 x 41 3/4 x 3 7/8 in. (framed)
Photo: Mike Bruce

American Sublime, 2017

oil and acrylic paint on bronze
98.5 x 62 x 60 cm.; 38 3/4 x 24 3/8 x 23 5/8 in.
Photo: Mike Bruce

‘Even his sculptures are victims of some kind of spell. They look like bodies transformed into three-dimensional paintings, colourful evil spirit-shapes hanging around the studio, dancing and drinking when everyone is asleep, returning to stand inert on their wooden pedestals during the day.’

F. Bonami, ‘Paintophagia. The Work of Art in the Age of Manual Production of Technical Reproduction’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Tate Liverpool, Liverpool; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; London: Tate, 2009, p. 73

On the Way to the Leisure Centre, 2017

oil on panel
122 x 244 x 2.2 cm.; 48 1/8 x 96 1/8 x 7/8 in.
Photo: Mike Bruce

‘His technical virtuosity is paired with a kind of poetics that shifts between high and low styles, between the comic and the dramatic, between the fantastic and allegorical and the clownish and grandiloquent. He often performs a kind of rhetorical inversion of the subject, so that the idyllic becomes terrible, the mystical becomes comical, the noble becomes picturesque, the lyrical becomes dramatic, and the solemn becomes spectral.’

S. Risaliti, ‘Glenn Brown. Admiration. Exultation, Freedom’, in Glenn Brown. Piaceri Sconosciuti, exh.cat., Florence: Museo Stefano Bardini, 2017, p. 14

Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above, 2017

oil on panel
231 x 192 x 2.8 cm.; 91 x 75 5/8 x 1 1/8 in.
Photo: Mike Bruce

‘It was partially the rich history of the monochrome, or the grisaille, that interested me. A lot of my paintings are very colourful. The colour is heightened as much as possible, to the point of being grotesque and rather repugnant. When you do one thing to the extreme, you want to push the other extreme, too, so I took all the colour out. And I like questioning: is it a drawing or is it a painting? Is it a sculpture or is it a painting? I like works crossing between different media to try out ideas in the studio.’

G. Brown, ‘Glenn Brown and Xavier Bray in Conversation’, in Glenn Brown: Come to Dust, exh.cat., London: Gagosian Gallery, 2017, p. 83

Pain Killer, 2017

indian ink and acrylic on panel
85.4 x 60 cm.; 33 3/8 x 23 5/8 in.
89.8 x 64.4 x 4.5 cm; 35 3/8 x 25 3/8 x 1 3/4 in. (framed)
Photo: Mike Bruce

‘Brown’s drawings are equally complex and continue his practice of layering one image over another. In a distinct departure from his paintings, he does not repeat the marks found in other works, where he often paints a replica of a brushstroke. Instead, Brown’s marks are a testament to the capacity of the drawn line to create life. Quick or slow, thick or thin, bold or soft, each mark exhales. This mark-making functions like Dr. Frankenstein’s sutures – they stitch together bits and pieces of art history to form a new entity. These drawings are often two-sided, with the ghost image on the reverse combining with the image on the front in complex configurations.’

J. Fleming, ‘Glenn Brown: Opening the Eye of the Creature’, in Glenn Brown, exh.cat., Des Moines: Des Moines Art Center, 2016, p. 38

Unknown Pleasures, 2016

oil on panel
164 x 105.5 x 2,.2 cm.; 64 5/8 x 41 1/2 x 7/8 in.
Photo: Mike Bruce

‘While the high seriousness of his paintings is unquestionable, so too is the humour – sometimes wry, sometimes banal, most of all ironic.’ 

D. Freedberg, ‘Against Cliché. Glenn Brown and the Possibilities of Painting’, in Glenn Brown, exh.cat., New York: Gagosian Gallery 2004, p. 5

Die Mutter des Künstlers, 2016

oil on panel
200 x 162 cm.; 78 3/4 x 63 3/4 in.
205 x 167 x 6 cm.; 80 3/4 x 65 3/4 x 2 3/8 in. (framed)
Photo: Mike Bruce

‘I’m generally not too interested in that relationship between figure and ground. I’m more interested in when the ground becomes part of the figure and the figure part of the ground, as the figures start to disintegrate and turn into the ground.’

G. Brown, ‘Conversation between Glenn Brown and Bice Curiger’, in Glenn Brown, exh.cat., Arles: Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, 2016, p. 66

Life on the Moon, 2016

oil on panel
100 x 78.5 cm.; 39 3/8 x 30 7/8 in.
Photo: Mike Bruce

In the end we all succumb to the pull of the molten core, 2016

indian ink and acrylic on panel
135 x 95 x 2.8 cm.; 53 1/8 x 37 3/8 x 1 1/8 in.
Collection: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle
The artwork was donated to the Laing Art Gallery collection as part of the Contemporary Art Society’s Great Works scheme, with the support of the artist and the Sfumato Foundation.
Photo: Mike Bruce

‘Glenn Brown’s drawings also take their cue from works of the past but their approach is, we might say, more subtle and careful. Curved lines like small commas, or longer, frizzy, undulating waves create a tangle of lines that together form a face or silhouette. And, caught in the same trap, another face, pair of eyes, or brow appears. Brown blends two images that together more or less form a whole, each of which tries to call louder than the other for the viewer’s attention, threatening the sense of the drawing and its visibility. Rather than give the figure consistency, the lines that frisk around it seem like skin. The drawing and the image shed layers like skin after being too long or unexpectedly exposed to the sun or cold. They chap. But, thanks to the gambols of the pencil, they do not freeze.’

J. Lavrador, ‘Glenn Brown: L’etincelante et horrible claret / Dazzling, Ghastly Clarity’, in Glenn Brown, exh.cat., Arles: Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, 2016, p. 28

Poor Moon, 2016

Indian ink and acrylic on panel
92 x 73.5 x 2.2 cm.; 36 1/4 x 29 x 7/8 in. (framed)
Photo: Mike Bruce

Drawing 37 (after Fragonard), 2015

Indian ink on paper, Pergamenata White
84.2 x 63.8 cm.; 33 1/8 x 25 1/8 in.

Drawing 16 (after De Gheyn II), 2015

Indian ink on paper, Pergamenata Natural
37.7 x 24.7 cm.; 14 7/8 x 9 3/4 in.
60 x 46.8 x 3 cm.; 23 5/8 x 18 3/8 x 1 1/8 in. (framed)
Photo: Mike Bruce

The art of drawing has such excellent qualities that it not only follows the works of nature but produces infinitely more creations than nature itself.
Leonardo da Vinci

‘The original function of the drawings selected by Brown, whether they are loose sketches, studies of individual figures or detailed preparatory drawings for paintings, should not really concern him or us. As early as the 16th century, drawings from renowned artists were appreciated for their aesthetic qualities, irrespective of their function in the creative process, as holds true today – the artist's energy is concentrated in a direct, even spontaneous fashion. With just a few lines, as the quote from Leonardo at the beginning of this text states, entire worlds can be created. This process is substrantially more complicated and time-consuming in painting, as can be witnessed in Glenn Brown’s own paintings. Similarly, in contrast to his own earlier sketches which were important to Brown only insofar as they allowed him to produce paintings, the drawings he has created since 2013 are autonomous works with a thematic relationships both to his panel paintings and his sculptures.’

A. Schalhorn, ‘Calculation and Passion: On the drawings of Glenn Brown’, in Glenn Brown: Dessins, exh. cat., Berlin/Paris: Galerie Max Hetzler/Holzwarth Publications, 2015, p. 64

Maddalena Penitente, 2014

oil paint over acrylic paint on metal armature
107 x 93 x 72 cm.; 42 1/8 x 36 5/8 x 28 3/8 in.
Photo: Rob McKeever

‘Made by accumulating layers of oil paint on plaster and wire armatures, these hybrid objects appear to embrace all that his two-dimensional works reject. Bold, loose, exaggerated, hot-blooded, formless, caked, dripped, and gravity defying, they seem to celebrate paint’s material autonomy. When working in this three-dimensional format, Brown’s hands are no longer dematerialized. They become vessels for a bawdy and indulgent exploration of painting’s flesh.’ 

A.M. Gingeras, ‘Guilty: The Work of Glenn Brown’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., London: Serpentine Gallery, 2004, p.17

Reproduction, 2014

oil on panel
135 x 101 cm.; 53 1/8 x 39 3/4 in.
Photo: Rob McKeever

‘The paintings sit within another world where the atmosphere is different. Not necessarily breathable even. It can be claustrophobic and dreamlike, I think. The air is toxic, it’s maybe Martian. Hence the green faces and languid pallor of a lot of the figures that I depict.’

G. Brown, ‘Conversation between Glenn Brown and Bice Curiger’, in Glenn Brown, exh.cat., Arles: Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, 2016, p. 66.

Necrophiliac Springtime, 2013

oil on panel
200 x 324 cm.; 78 3/4 x 127 1/2 in.

‘It could be said that with the flatness of the painted surface, I am denying my physical presence – not only because actual marks can barely be seen, but also because the viewer is not sure how I have made the paintings, or even if they are painted at all. The artist is only a disembodied presence.

I find myself making flowing curls all over the paintings to take you visually on a journey over an image. For me this is an interesting way of moving the viewer’s eyes around the canvas.

I try to get those same sliding brush marks into the sculpture, even though the process is different physically. The sculpture involves large brushes; I always use one size for the entire sculpture, whereas with paintings, I use tiny brushes of various types...’

G. Brown in conversation with Rochelle Steiner (2004), in Remember Everything: 40 Years Galerie Max Hetzler, exh. cat., Berlin/London: Galerie Max Hetzler/Holzwarth Publications/Ridinghouse, 2014, p. 75

A Sailor's Life, 2011

oil on panel
163 x 120 cm.; 64 1/8 x 47 1/4 in.
Photo: def image

Die große Nacht im Eimer, 2011

oil on panel
128 x 96 cm.; 50 3/8 x 37 3/4 in. (oval)

‘The old masters are not the only ones implicated in these incidents; Glenn Brown also drags in music, science fiction, popular imagery/fantasy and recent art among other things. A portrait of an old man with an exuberant beard (Jean-Honoré Fragonard's Tête de vieillard de profil, 1767) is brought to life and given a title borrowed from a work by Georg Baselitz representing a boy mastrubating: Die große Nacht im Eimer (1962–1963), famous for having been seized by the public prosecutor. Here are collisions between one universe and another, between title and image, between treatment and iconography, between one epoch and another.’

J-M. Gallais, ‘Exquisite Deliquescence’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Berlin: Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2011, p. 10

Woman I, 2011

oil, acrylic on fibreglass, steel
135 x 90 x 70 cm.; 53 1/8 x 35 3/8 x 27 1/2 in.

‘The title refers to Willem de Kooning's Woman I (1950–1952), his aggressive synthesis of archetypal prehistoric and historic feminine figures. In this time, the picture signified the return of figuration in Modernist painting. Woman I, if it is indeed her, has come to life; she is transformed. She steps out of the canvas, a kind of hillock of paint devoid of background. Brown is unconsciously borrowing as much from Nikki de Saint Phalle as from the American expressionist painter and scuptor. Painting and sculpture have grown together and everything in this strange mass is deliciously exposed.’

J-M. Gallais, ‘Exquisite Deliquescence’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Berlin: Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2011, p. 12

N***** of the World, 2011

oil on panel
172 x 138 cm.; 67 3/4 x 54 3/8 in.
Photo: def image

‘An atmosphere of historical painting pervades Glenn Brown’s work. Some of his paintings are permeated by references while others are born of violent collisions. These collisions between disparate elements are romantic rather than iconoclastic. Rembrandt is not used as an ironing board, as suggested by Duchamp; instead he is photographed, reproduced, scanned, copy-pasted, transferred, retouched and finally repainted for N***** of the World. Yet the old masters dance under Glenn Brown’s brushes, they move out of the picture, some guided gently, some brutally.’

J-M. Gallais, ‘Exquisite Deliquescence’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Berlin: Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2011, p. 10

After Life, 2009

oil on panel
138 x 114 cm.; 54 3/8 x 44 7/8 in.
Photo: Prudence Cummings

War in Peace, 2009

oil on panel
116 x 87 cm.; 45 5/8 x 34 1/4 in.

‘Significantly, Brown reserves the most extreme disintegration for the human figure – torsos, limbs, heads, and faces have recently become blistering masses of living flesh, eating away at the very essence of the subject. Surface as such seems to be dissolved into animated matter as violated, diseased and contaminated skin takes on the appearance of the soft tissue that lies beneath the protective bodily membrane. Brown takes the most base of all limbs, turns it upside down and elevates it to the subject of the noble form of the portrait.

The maltreated and detached human foot as an exalted emblem of decay, horror and death makes its appearance in a series by Georg Baselitz, its genealogy reaching back to Géricault and Rodin. Salvator Dalí's exploration of the object suggests the vision of a world in turmoil and flux.’

C. Grunenberg, ‘Capability Brown: Spectacle of hyperrealism, the panorama and abject horror in the painting of Glenn Brown’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Tate Liverpool, Liverpool; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; London: Tate, 2009, p. 23

Spearmint Rhino, 2009

oil on panel
194 x 260.5 cm.; 76 3/8 x 102 1/2 in.

Burlesque, 2008

oil on panel
122.5 x 203 cm.; 48 1/4 x 79 7/8 in.
Photo: Prudence Cummings

Suffer Well, 2007

oil on panel
157 x 120 cm.; 61 3/4 x 47 1/4 in.
Photo: Robert McKeever

‘When Brown uses a specific source painting more than once, each obsessive revisitation gives birth to a stunningly unique creation. This diversity is particularly apparent in the work he based on Frank Auerbach's emotionally wrought portraits of his favourite model, Juliet Yardley Mills. In Brown's hands, Auerbach's vigorous brushstrokes and thick impasto – intended to convey the sitter's strong physicality and the character of the artist/model relationship – are quietly muffled to create a completely smooth, illusionistic rendering of the source works' drama-laden materiality. While every reworking of Auerbach's originals involves changing the overall palette, recasting the backdrop, or tweaking facial features in order to transform the mood, Brown always retains a profound respect for the composition. Each time he returns to a portrait of J.Y.M., he accomplishes more than a postmodern act of appropriation. Far from being a simple critique of the source painting, each of Brown's readaptations is a renewal of his vows of fidelity and devotion to his art.’

A. M. Gingeras, Guilty: ‘The Work of Glenn Brown’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., London: Serpentine Gallery, 2004, p. 13 and 15

The Hinterland, 2006

oil on panel
148 x 122.5 cm.; 58 1/4 x 48 1/4 in.

‘Not solid, not liquid, not gaseous: Brown’s works possess a different physical condition, one of the innumerable possibilities of matter, all new to explore, discover, investigate, and interrogate. His art is unsettling prophecy and unbridled form, enigmatically and proudly presenting us with meaning.’

C. Cunaccia, ‘Glenn Brown. The Heretic of the Arts’, in Glenn Brown. Piaceri Sconosciuti, exh.cat., Florence: Museo Stefano Bardini, 2017, p. 73.

Declining Nude, 2006

oil on panel
140.2 x 99 cm.; 55 1/4 x 39 in.

‘Glenn Brown’s palette selection, oscillating from ice blue to incendiary red, and from sulphur yellow to mustard or fluorescent toxic green. He does not choose his colours at random but borrows them from other paintings by the masters of the past. Thus the palette used by Renoir, Degas or Van Gogh may be found to some extent on a canvas by Velázquez, Rembrandt and Fragonard. Glenn Brown uses colour in an unusual manner. It is not a question of backlighting. It’s a chronicle of the light.’

J. Lavrador, ‘Glenn Brown: L’etincelante et horrible claret / Dazzling, Ghastly Clarity’, in Glenn Brown, exh.cat., Arles: Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, 2016, p. 26.

Asylums of Mars, 2006

oil on wood
156 x 122.5 cm.; 61 3/8 x 48 1/4
Photo: Jorg von Bruchhausen

The International Velvet, 2004

oil on panel
121.5 x 145.5 cm.; 47 7/8 x 57 1/4 in.

International Velvet stands at the beginning of a series of “portraits” in which the self is disfigured into an unrecognisable blob – a mass of raw flesh that defies identification as head, torso or object, punctured by multiple undetermined orifices surrounded by sparse sprouts of pubic hair and absurdly budding flowers. Brown's subjects are all in various states of decay, an atmosphere of nauseating disintegration emanating from rancid surfaces and putrid colours. They display the classic caracteristics of abject horror which, at its heart, is ambiguous: an uncertain state of animation suspending the subject between life and death; the fear of corpses; and a disgust in the face of bodily fluids, emissions and purulence.’

C. Grunenberg, ‘Capability Brown: Spectacle of hyperrealism, the panorama and abject horror in the painting of Glenn Brown’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Tate Liverpool, Liverpool; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; London: Tate, 2009, p. 24

Architecture and Morality, 2004

oil on canvas
140 x 98 cm.; 55 1/8 x 38 5/8 in.
Collection: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Photo: bpk Berlin / CNAC-MNAM / Philippe Migeat

‘I have used a number of Van Gogh’s flower paintings – they all became portraits. The bouquets are like complex heads full of different thoughts represented by a myriad of brushmarks. But it’s not just his brush strokes that I am interested in. It’s his colour sensibility – his extraordinary ability to paint somebody with a bright green or yellow face, but for it to seem natural.’

G. Brown, ‘Conversation between Glenn Brown and Bice Curiger’, in Glenn Brown, exh.cat., Arles: Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, 2016, p. 68.

Sex, 2003

oil on panel
126 x 85 cm.; 49 5/8 x 33 1/2 in.
Photo: Rob McKeever
Collection: Tate, London

‘Over the course of his career, Brown has portrayed a cast of characters that are exquisite, flawed, and tragic, set in and displayed in relation to surreal and at times dreamlike surroundings. His fantastical imagery serves as a catalyst for viewers to consider secular notions of beauty, abject ugliness, youth, death, and decay, as well as conditions outside the realm of human existence.’

R. Steiner, ‘Window to Another World’, in Glenn Brown. Three Exhibitions, exh.cat., Gagosian, New York; New York: Rizzoli, 2009, p. 9.

Dark Star, 2003

oil on panel
100 x 75 cm.; 39 1/2 x 29 1/2 in.
Art Institute of Chicago, through prior gift of Emily Crane Chadbourne, 2004.13

The Aesthetic Poor (for Tim Buckley) after John Martin, 2002

oil on canvas
220.5 x 333 cm.; 86 3/4 x 131 1/8 in.

‘The apocallyptic tendency reaches its climax in the landscapes of John Martin, with their evocation of sublime terror and fear, liberally exploited and rewoked by Brown. Martin's large-scale scenes capture catastrophic destruction and mayhem on an epic scale, forever arrested in a climatic moment, to be marvelled and admired. The collapsing mountains, erupting volcanoes, streaming lava and divine retribution through lightning flashes are transformed in Brown's adaptations from moral lesson to filmic spectacle. The Biblical subjects which he appropriates from Martin's most famous paintings are the deluge and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Again Brown creates radically altered versions: The Aesthetic Poor (for Tim Buckley) after John Martin 2002 banishes suffering humanity and emphasises the destructive force of the deluge through vortex-like swirls and transparent psychedelic veils in a post-Nietzschean vision of the end of the earth after it has been deserted by God.’

C. Grunenberg, ‘Capability Brown: Spectacle of hyperrealism, the panorama and abject horror in the painting of Glenn Brown’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Tate Liverpool, Liverpool; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; London: Tate, 2009, p. 20

Dark Angel (for Ian Curtis) after Chris Foss, 2002

oil on canvas
225 x 341 cm.; 88 5/8 x 134 1/4 in.

‘The fusion of the older trompe l'oeil effects with new digital imaging and projection technologies has been termed “Electronic Baroque” – “a merger of the Baroque and the industrial panorama (1880 forward)”, becoming “a master code for the new global economy”. Brown's cinematic landscapes are part of these developments but also resist them, the retrogressive orientation of the medium of painting defying the vortex-like effect of “liquid modernity”. As exhilarating and seductive as they may be, these paintings also offer the comforting stability, stillness and permanence of the fixed viewpoint and flawless creation.’

C. Grunenberg, ‘Capability Brown: Spectacle of hyperrealism, the panorama and abject horror in the painting of Glenn Brown’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Tate Liverpool, Liverpool; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; London: Tate, 2009, p. 22

The Loves of Shepherd, after Tony Roberts, 2000

oil on canvas
219.5 x 336 cm.; 86 3/8 x 132 1/4 in.

‘Brown’s adaptations are never slavish copies but rather careful interpretations and transformations of historical models. The Loves of Shepherds, 2000, for example, Brown’s take on Anthony Roberts' cover illustration for an edition of Robert A. Henlein's novel Double Star (published in 1974), is, on the surface, a faithful rendering of the original composition. However, Brown exaggerates the panoramic scope of the picture not only through the greatly increased scale (enlarged from book cover to a canvas measuring over three metres) but also through the addition of meticulous detailing on both the spaceship and the background. Two essential effects of the panorama come together in the Loves of Shepherds: the confrontation with vast expanses of space from an elevated viewpoint and the accompanying diminution of the viewer through the pedantic rendering of the subject.’

C. Grunenberg, ‘Capability Brown: Spectacle of hyperrealism, the panorama and abject horror in the painting of Glenn Brown’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Tate Liverpool, Liverpool; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; London: Tate, 2009, p. 20

Little Deaths, 2000

oil on panel
68 x 54 cm.; 26 3/4 x 21 1/4 in.

Kinder Transport, 1999

oil on MDF
67.5 x 58 cm.; 26 5/8 x 22 7/8 in.

I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper, 1996

oil on canvas mounted on board
64.8 x 53.5 cm.; 25 1/2 x 21 in.
Courtesy FRAC-Artothèque Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Limoges (FRANCE)

‘Full of enticing metaphor and begging to be unravelled, the titles are as enigmatic as the paintings they purport to name.’

E. Shinn, Glenn Brown. Transmutations. What’s Old Is New Again, exh.cat., Eugene: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, 2018, p. 12.

Decline and Fall, 1995

oil and canvas on board
58.4 x 54.6 cm.; 23 x 21 1/2 in.
Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London

You Never Touch My Skin in the Way You Did and You've Even Changed the Way You Kiss Me, 1994

oil on canvas
152.4 x 122.6 x 3.8 cm.; 60 x 48 1/4 x 1 1/2 in.
Collection: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Butler Family Fund, 1994

‘The question was asked at one tutorial: “Why bother painting? Why not just take photographs of other artist’s work who create images?” I liked painting and its history, so my answer was: “Well, I’ll paint paint.” Auerbach’s surfaces were very much like the surface of the moon. They were ostensibly flat, but very textured. The brush mark thus became the subject of my paintings.’

G. Brown, ‘Conversation between Glenn Brown and Bice Curiger’, in Glenn Brown, exh.cat., Arles: Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, 2016, p. 64.

Never Forever, 1995

plaster, acrylic and oil paint
35.6 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm.; 14 x 12 x 12 in.

‘The different genres of Brown's work – the details of expressionist paintings, the science fiction images, and the portraits – propose a range of congruent possibilities for reverie. However, his most literal, yet strange, works are the sculptures that he has produced since Never Forever (1995). These sculptures are made particularly perverse by the fact that they appear to be everything that the paintings are not. Seemingly built up out of think heavy brushstrokes of pure colour, sometimes laid on, wet into wet, they are polar opposites of his paintings' mute, implacable surfaces that reveal no clues as how the paint has been laid down.’

C. Grunenberg, ‘Capability Brown: Spectacle of hyperrealism, the panorama and abject horror in the painting of Glenn Brown’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Tate Liverpool, Liverpool; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; London: Tate, 2009 


All works: © Glenn Brown

here