About
I like my paintings to have one foot in the grave, to be not quite of this world. For me they exist in a dream world, a world that is made up of all the accumulated images stored in our subconscious that coagulate and mutate when we sleep.
—Glenn Brown
Mining art history and popular culture, Glenn Brown has created an artistic language that eschews categorization, fusing a wide range of time periods and pictorial conventions through reference, appropriation, and precise attention to detail. His mannerist impulses stem from a desire to breathe new life into history, using its forms as vehicles for his exploration of paint.
As an art student at Goldsmiths College, London, in the 1980s, Brown wrestled with the idea that painting had reached its end, as artists, critics, and scholars were then proclaiming. Seeking a future for painting despite its historical baggage, he made illusionistic versions of the thickly painted works of Frank Auerbach and Karel Appel, rendering their layered impasto in smoothly detailed two-dimensional brushstrokes.
Brown sources images from the internet, books, and other printed materials, distorting and manipulating them. In the 1990s he created several paintings based on science fiction novels drawing inspiration from sci-fi illustrations of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the apocalyptic scenes created by painter and illustrator John Martin. In these works Brown combined panoramic and close-up views, a technique he would later apply to depictions of the body and flesh, alluding to works by Salvador Dalí, Willem de Kooning, Chaim Soutine, and others.
As a complement to his painting practice, he creates sculptures by accumulating thick layers of oil paint over structures or found bronze casts. Brown has also produced detailed drawings in which he further explores the uncanny juxtapositions seen in his paintings. Since 2013 he has increased his engagement with drawing’s tactility, using different types of lines, shadings, and strokes in order to reinterpret the age-old tradition of copying historical subjects as a learning tool. His drawings reinforce the importance of gesture, echoing the layered lines of Old Master sketches.
Many of Brown’s titles make reference to literature, film, or individuals. Though not overtly related to the content of the paintings, drawings, and sculptures they name, the titles assert a directness that parallels Brown’s subject matter. In this way, he combines textual and visual reference as a means to update art history and perception.
Exhibitions such as the British Museum’s Historical Baggage: Glenn Brown and His Sources (2018) have made the links between Brown’s works and those from which he draws inspiration even more apparent. The show paired early portraits based on prints by Rembrandt van Rijn and Lucian Freud with Brown’s 2012 series Half-Life, a new engagement with Rembrandt’s work, revealing Brown’s intricate technical evolution over the past decade.
Photo: courtesy the artist
#GlennBrown
Website
Exhibitions
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2023
The Spring 2023 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Roe Ethridge’s Two Kittens with Yarn Ball (2017–22) on its cover.
Glenn Brown: From the Inside Out
Novelist Andrew Winer reports on the formal, conceptual, historical, and philosophical perspectives embedded in Glenn Brown’s latest paintings and drawings. The two talked after the opening of the artist’s recent New York exhibition Glenn Brown: We’ll Keep On Dancing Till We Pay the Rent.
Glenn Brown: We’ll Keep On Dancing Till We Pay the Rent
In conjunction with his exhibition Glenn Brown: We’ll Keep On Dancing Till We Pay the Rent at Gagosian in New York, the artist sits down to discuss his new paintings, sculptures, and drawings.
In Conversation
Glenn Brown and Jacky Klein
Glenn Brown speaks with art historian Jacky Klein about working between mediums, his first finished painting of 2021, and the evolution of his artistic voice.
Augurs of Spring
As spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, Sydney Stutterheim reflects on the iconography and symbolism of the season in art both past and present.
Visions of the Self: Jenny Saville on Rembrandt
Jenny Saville reveals the process behind her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt’s masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles.
Gagosian Quarterly Talks
Glenn Brown and Xavier Bray
Touching on everything from the politics of taste to the vibratory character of lines, Glenn Brown and Xavier Bray, the director of the Wallace Collection, discuss Brown’s exhibition, Come to Dust, in London.
Glenn Brown
With preparations underway for an exhibition in London, Glenn Brown sat down with author Hari Kunzru to discuss Brown's artmaking process, the idea of the copy, and surprising overlaps between creating visual and literary works.
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2018
The Spring 2018 Gagosian Quarterly with a cover by Ed Ruscha is now available for order.
Glenn Brown Rembrandt: After Life
In this short film, Glenn Brown demonstrates his process in creating artworks for an exhibition at Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
Art Basel Hong Kong 2023
March 22–25, 2023
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
www.artbasel.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in Art Basel Hong Kong 2023 with a presentation of modern and contemporary works by international artists.
Jadé Fadojutimi, As usual, the season’s showers tend to linger, 2023 © Jadé Fadojutimi
Visit
The Brown Collection
Glenn Brown
On October 11, 2022, Glenn Brown is opening the Brown Collection, home to the artist’s art collection and administrative offices, as well as three floors of exhibition space, in an exactingly renovated warehouse building in the Marylebone district of London. The inaugural exhibition reveals the breadth of Brown’s oeuvre through a selection of his paintings, drawings, and sculptures, ranging from early appropriations of Frank Auerbach and Jean-Honoré Fragonard to recent layered portraits. In time, works by other historical and contemporary artists that have inspired or that comment on works in the Collection will be exhibited.
During Frieze week, the Collection will be open from Tuesday, October 11, to Sunday, October 16, from 11am to 6pm. The regular hours are Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 11am to 6pm.
Interior of the Brown Collection, London. Artwork © Glenn Brown
Performance
Glass Handel
with Glenn Brown
Saturday, September 3, 2022, 3pm & 8pm
Printworks, London
www.bbc.co.uk
Glass Handel combines music by Philip Glass and George Frideric Handel to create a unique operatic experience featuring dance, live painting, fashion, film, and soundscapes in the vast space of Printworks London. Glenn Brown will be painting live during the performance, which is organized by the BBC Proms classical music festival and the English National Opera. The production was conceived by Cath Brittan, Anthony Roth Costanzo, and Visionaire.
Photo: Edgar Laguinia
Museum Exhibitions
On View
Glenn Brown
The Real Thing
Through June 18, 2023
Landesmuseum Hannover, Germany
www.landesmuseum-hannover.de
This exhibition presents works from the museum’s collection, including paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, alongside paintings and drawings by Glenn Brown. Organizing the works into six curatorial groupings—animals, landscapes and trees, the nude, portraits, still lifes, and the artist—Brown juxtaposes his art with work by Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1557), Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), and Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), among others. Held across two major institutions in Hannover, Germany—the Sprengel Museum and Landesmuseum—the exhibition reimagines the museums’ permanent collections, inviting a consideration of the relationship between the art of the past and of the present.
Glenn Brown, Come All Ye Rolling Minstrels, 2009 © Glenn Brown
On View
Glenn Brown
The Real Thing
Through June 18, 2023
Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany
www.sprengel-museum.de
For this exhibition, which combines the work of old, modern, and contemporary masters across two major institutions in Hannover, Germany—the Sprengel Museum and Landesmuseum—Glenn Brown reimagines the museums’ permanent collections, generating an enlightening conversation around the relationship between contemporary and historic art. The Sprengel Museum show consists of two parts: a solo presentation of formative paintings by Brown in the main room and thematic interventions within the permanent collection rooms, where Brown replaces selected works with those of his own, using categories such as color, material, realities, and faces to provide a narrative and a structure.
Glenn Brown, Doggerland, 2022 © Glenn Brown. Photo: Rob McKeever
On View
Reaching for the Stars
From Maurizio Cattelan to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Through June 18, 2023
Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy
www.palazzostrozzi.org
Reaching for the Stars celebrates thirty years since Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo began collecting art. Presenting highlights from her collection, the exhibition includes works by leading international artists and explores the most recent trends in art, embracing painting, sculpture, installation, video, and performance. Work by Glenn Brown, Damien Hirst, and Rudolf Stingel is included.
Rudolf Stingel, Untitled, Ex Unico, 2004 © Rudolf Stingel. Photo: courtesy Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
Closed
Masterpieces in Miniature
The 2021 Model Art Gallery
June 26, 2021–April 24, 2022
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, England
pallant.org.uk
In a unique response to the coronavirus pandemic, Pallant House Gallery has commissioned the 2021 Model Art Gallery, a scaled-down space designed by Wright & Wright architects featuring specially made miniature artworks—all ranging from the size of a pound coin to no larger than 20 centimeters—by more than thirty leading contemporary British artists, including Glenn Brown, Edmund de Waal, Damien Hirst, and Rachel Whiteread. Together with the Thirty Four Gallery and the Model Gallery 2000, these miniature galleries tell the story of Modern British art from the 1930s through today.
Installation view, Masterpieces in Miniature: The 2021 Model Art Gallery, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, England, June 26, 2021–April 24, 2022. Artwork, left to right, top to bottom: © Lothar Gotz; © Julian Opie; © Bob and Roberta Smith; © Michael Landy; © Sean Scully; © Cecily Brown; © Glenn Brown; © Tacita Dean; © George Shaw; © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd, DACS 2021; © Gillian Wearing; © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd, DACS 2021; © Gary Hume; © Fiona Rae; © Rachel Whiteread; © Toby Ziegler
Press
See Inside the Light-Filled Studio of Glenn Brown, Where Old Master Woodcuts and Frames Serve as Sources of Inspiration by Julia Halperin
Artnet
November 8, 2022
Online
PDF
See Glenn Brown’s Mind-Melting New Spin on the Old Masters by Naomi Rea
Artnet
February 13, 2018
Online
PDF
Inside Dr Frankenstein's studio: Glenn Brown on his macabre mashups by Stuart Jeffries
The Guardian
January 24, 2018
Online
PDF