Glenn Brown (born 1966) is a British contemporary artist known for the use of appropriation in his paintings. Starting with reproductions from other artists' works, Glenn Brown transforms the appropriated image by changing its colour, position, orientation, height and width relationship, mood and/or size. Despite these changes, he has occasionally been accused of plagiarism.
He has had a number of solo exhibitions: at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2004, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 2008, at Tate Liverpool in 2009 (later shown at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin), at the Ludwig Múzeum in Budapest in 2010, at the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh in Arles, in Provence, in 2016 and at the Landesmuseum and Sprengel Museum in Hanover in 2023.
Brown currently resides and works in London and Suffolk, England. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2000. However, his exhibition at Tate Britain for the Turner Prize sparked some controversy, as one of his paintings was found to be closely based on the science-fiction illustration "Double Star" created by the artist Tony Roberts in 1973.
He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to art.
Brown opened his own museum in October 2022 named The Brown Collection in Marylebone, London.
Education
Brown was born in Hexham, Northumberland. He completed his Foundation Course at Norwich School of Art & Design (1985) and later received a B.A. degree in Fine Art at Bath School of Art and Design (1985–1988) and an M.A. degree at Goldsmiths College (1990–1992).
Technique and style
Brown appropriates images by living, working artists, such as Frank Auerbach and Georg Baselitz, as well as paintings by historical artists, such as Guido Reni, Diego Velázquez, Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Eugène Delacroix, John Martin, Gustave Courbet, Adolph Menzel, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Chaïm Soutine and Salvador Dalí. He claims that the references to these artists are not direct quotations, but alterations and combinations of several works by different artists,Glenn Brown: "People may think that a single painting stimulates me to make a 'copy', but I never make a direct quotation. I start with a vague idea of the kind of painting I want to make, and I do small sketches of it. These will more or less determine the size of the painting, the colour, the type of background, etc, but at that point I still don’t know what the subject matter will be, or which artist will inspire the work. Then I spend some time looking through books and catalogues to find a painting that fits my idea as closely as possible. I look at hundreds of images to find a reproduction I can transform by stretching, pulling or turning it upside down so it fits into my practice". Quoted in although the artists whose work is appropriated do not always agree.Richard Alleyne, How inspiration can be mistaken for imitation The Telegraph, 29 November 2000 (accessed 7 January 2014). Art critic Michael Bracewell said Brown is "less concerned with the art-historical status of those works he appropriates than with their ability to serve his purpose – namely his epic exploration of paint and painting." In most cases, the artist uses reproductions printed in exhibition catalogues, found on the internet, or ordered through print-on-demand companies. Brown's paintings, which are uniformly smooth in surface, typically offer a trompe-l'œil illusion of turbulent, painterly application. Many viewers of his work have expressed the sensation of wanting to "lick" and "touch" the paintings. Brown uses thin brushes with which he produces elongated curls and twists. The resulting flatness of the painting alludes to its origin as the chosen photograph or digital image. Per the artist Michael Stubbs: "Brown‘s computer-based preparation method prior to painting is [not] the sole reason for his relation with the digital. The computer increases and develops his choices of found imagery, but it is only a means, not the end. […]. On the contrary, his works are markers for the future of painting because they are both surface effect and material methodology, not despite the screen, but because of it."
Several of Brown's titles refer to popular music recordings, such as Public Image Ltd's "Death Disco" (1979), Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's Architecture & Morality (1981), and Cocteau Twins' "Alas Dies Laughing" (1982).See Pablo Lafuente's summary of album titles resembled in Glenn Brown’s paintings: "Architecture and Morality (after a 1981 album by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark), Death Disco (a 1979 record by Public Image Ltd.), Alas Dies Laughing (a Cocteau Twins song from 1982), The Osmond Family (after the 1970s American band), and The Three Wise Virgins (after Gladys Brooks' 1957 novel, or maybe after Carlos Schwabe’s 1970s painting, or possibly a 16th-century fresco in Parma). He has also invoked film titles,Such as "The Rebel", "Saturday Night Fever" or "The Sound of Music". and the names of other artists.For example the paintings "after Chris Foss", the illustrator of science fiction novels; the series of paintings dedicated "for Ian Curtis", the lead singer of the band Joy Division; or his painting "Joseph Beuys" from 2001. The titles are not obviously connected to the paintings themselves and are not meant to be descriptive of the artwork. Brown: "That's it – the titles are often trying to be embarrassingly direct, and vulgar in their directness. I don't think that the painting is less direct, but I don't want the paintings to be illustrative."
Paintings
The subject matters of Glenn Brown's paintings range from science-fiction landscapes to abstract compositions and figurative images based on art historical references. Most paintings share a morbid, almost creepy atmosphere, which is especially underlined by the incorporation of certain unsightly physical features of his figures such as yellowish decaying teeth,Evident for example in "The Great Masturbator" from 2006. translucently white blind-looking eyeballs,Evident in "Sex" from 2003 or "Wild Horses" from 2007. unnatural skin coloursEvident in "Dark Star" from 2003, "Joseph Beuys" from 2001, "Led Zeppelin" from 2005 and many more. and suggestions of foulness and smell emanating from figures' bodies.See for instance "Spearmint Rhino" from 2009, "Greetings from the Future" from 2005, "Kill Yourself" from 2002. Brown: "I like my paintings to have one foot in the grave, as it were, and to be not quite of this world. I would like them to exist in a dream world, which I think of as being the place that they occupy, a world that is made up of the accumulation of images that we have stored in our subconscious, and that coagulate and mutate when we sleep."Glenn Brown quoted in
Many of Brown's portraits depict amorphous beings that have been described as "tumurous lumps that look like outsized, inflamed organs". Often they are ironically attributed with recurring features such as flowers growing out of their compost-like bodies,See "The Hinterland" from 2006, "Polichinelle" from 2007, "The Revolutionary Corps of Teenage Jesus" from 2005. hallows placed over headsSee especially Brown’s portraits that reference the works by Frank Auerbach, for example Brown’s "The Riches of the Poor" from 2003 or "Shallow Deaths" from 2000. or red noses.See "Sex" from 2003, "Declining Nude" from 2006 or "The Holy Virgin" from 2003. In few of these amorphous and abstract forms, female figures are embeddedSuch as the female figure in "God Speed to a Great Astronaut" from 2007 or "Asylums of Mars" from 2006. within the mottling masses of unidentifiable matter.
Sculptures Brown also places sculpture as a central point of his practice. They are created by accumulating thick layers of oil paint over structures or "often a found bronze sculpture, such as an equestrian figure or the human figure. Brown uses one large brush throughout the making of the sculpture. He paints shadows on the works to give them a light and dark side."His sculptures, deliberately emphasising the three-dimensional quality of oil brushstrokes, stand in stark contrast to his flat paintings. Brown: "Originally I presented the sculptures on the gallery floor to look as abject as possible, as if they had materialised from a painting and fallen to the ground. Also, I wanted to avoid the artificial context involved in putting them on a pedestal. To view them, you had to bend or crouch down, lowering yourself to their somewhat debased position. But they were just getting destroyed, so they had to be separated from the public by putting them in vitrines. As a result, I was able to make them more delicate, and at the same time I started to use more complex supporting structures inside them. It is these supports that allow the sculptures to tilt and lean as much as they do."
Etchings
In 2008 Brown created a series of prints entitled "Layered Etchings (Portraits)" which were inspired by the artists Urs Graf, Rembrandt and Lucian Freud. Brown scanned a vast number of reproductions from books and digitally manipulated them by stretching them to standard sizes. He then layered selected scans over each other, resulting in single images. The many contour and incarnation lines of the original works (the artist used up to fifteen different image sources for one layered portrait), as well as the textured spots of lithographic printing, obscure the sitters' individual identities. The resulting half-length portraits are "de-individualised" by the deliberate accumulation of too many portraits over each other.
The etchings were collated in Glenn Brown: Etchings (Portraits), published by Ridinghouse in 2009 which featured a specially commissioned text by John-Paul Stonard that discusses elements of the old and the new in the portraits as they embody concepts of destruction and the violence of appropriation.
Drawings In the last few years, Brown has extensively embraced drawing. Still conceptually rooted to art historical references, he stretches, combines, distorts and layers images to create subtle yet complex line-based works. Brown: "I fell completely in love with drawing again about four years ago. I love the delicate intimate movement of the hand as it draws a line. With Goltzius, for instance, you get this thrill of delicacy. Drawing has a freshness and passion painting often doesn’t"."In drawings produced since 2013, artists of the Renaissance (such as Andrea del Sarto), Mannerism (Bartholomäus Spranger), the Baroque (Peter Paul Rubens), the Rococo (Giovanni Battista Tiepolo), Neoclassicism (Pompeo Girolamo Batoni) and French Romanticism (Eugène Delacroix) have served as starting points for Brown’s eminently variable linear transformations."
Controversy
In 2000 Brown was accused of plagiarism by The Times. Glenn Brown referenced a work by Tony Roberts for a science fiction novel cover. A legal case brought by Roberts against Brown was settled out of court.
Public collections Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Arts Council Collection, London
British Museum, London
Delfina Foundation, London
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin
FRAC – Limousin, Limoges
Francois Pinault Foundation, Venice
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Rembrandtshuis, Amsterdam
Rennie Collection, Vancouver
Tate, London
The Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The New Art Gallery, Walsall
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
V-A-C Collection, Moscow
Zabludowicz Collection, London
The Brown Collection