Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid

An intimate survey of Cecily Brown’s paintings, drawings, and prints, providing a meditation on the intertwined themes of still life, memento mori, and vanitas in her work
Cecily Brown (b. 1969) transfixes viewers with sumptuous color, bravura brushwork, and complex narratives that relate to some of European painting’s grandest and most time-honored themes, including still life motifs and meditations on mortality through vanitas This intimate survey of the acclaimed British painter reexamines the work of an artist whose influential output references both modern heavyweights, such as Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, and Joan Mitchell, and Old Masters like Goya, Hogarth, Manet, and Rubens. The book features 21 paintings and 26 works on paper—drawings, watercolors, sketchbooks, and monotypes—that span the three decades of Brown’s career to date, including recently completed and never-before published works. A conversation with the artist provides insight into her process and sources, while an insightful essay situates Brown in the lineage of the great artists of the last five hundred years.
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(April 4–December 3, 2023)