!['Sex' (2003) Glenn Brown](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/%27Sex%27_%282003%29_Glenn_Brown.jpg)
Glenn Brown (born 1966 in
Hexham,
Northumberland
Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey.
It is bordered by land on ...
) is a British
artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...
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
Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...
.
He has had a number of solo exhibitions: at the
Serpentine Gallery in London in 2004, at the
Kunsthistorisches Museum
The Kunsthistorisches Museum ( "Museum of Art History", often referred to as the "Museum of Fine Arts") is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on the Vienna Ring Road, it is crowned with an octagonal do ...
in Vienna in 2008, at
Tate Liverpool
Tate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development C ...
in 2009 (later shown at the
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a non-profit contemporary arts institution based in Turin, Italy, founded by arts collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in 1995.
History
In 1995, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo established the Fo ...
in
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...
), at the
Ludwig Múzeum in Budapest in 2010, and at the
Fondation Vincent Van Gogh in
Arles
Arles (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Arle ; Classical la, Arelate) is a coastal city and commune in the South of France, a subprefecture in the Bouches-du-Rhône department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, in the former province of ...
, in
Provence
Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...
, in 2016.
Brown lives and works in London and Suffolk, England. He was nominated for the
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award) ...
in 2000. There was some controversy over his exhibition at
Tate Britain
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...
for the Turner Prize, as one of the paintings was closely based on the science-fiction illustration "Double Star" produced in 1973 by the artist Tony Roberts.
Brown was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
(CBE) in the
2019 Birthday Honours
The 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. The Birthday Honours are awarded as ...
for services to art.
Education
Brown completed his Foundation Course at
Norwich School of Art & Design
Norwich University of the Arts (NUA) is a public university in Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom that specialises in art, design and media. It was founded as Norwich School of Design in 1845 and has a long history of arts education. It gained fu ...
(1985) and later on received a B.A. degree in Fine Art at
Bath School of Art and Design (1985–1988), followed by an M.A. degree at
Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wo ...
(1990–1992).
Technique and style
!['On the Way to the Leisure Centre' (2017) Glenn Brown](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/%27On_the_Way_to_the_Leisure_Centre%27_%282017%29_Glenn_Brown.jpg)
Brown appropriates images by living, working artists, such as
Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach (born 29 April 1931) is a German-British painter. Born in Germany, he has been a naturalised British subject since 1947. He is considered one of the leading names in the School of London, with fellow artists Francis Bacon ...
and
Georg Baselitz, as well as paintings by historical artists, such as
Guido Reni,
Diego Velázquez
Diego RodrÃguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized June 6, 1599August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of th ...
,
Anthony van Dyck
Sir Anthony van Dyck (, many variant spellings; 22 March 1599 – 9 December 1641) was a Brabantian Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Southern Netherlands and Italy.
The seventh c ...
,
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...
,
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard (; 5 April 1732
(birth/baptism certificate)
– 22 August 1806) was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific ar ...
,
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...
,
John Martin,
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and t ...
,
Adolph Menzel
Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (8 December 18159 February 1905) was a German Realist artist noted for drawings, etchings, and paintings. Along with Caspar David Friedrich, he is considered one of the two most prominent German painters of t ...
,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "R ...
,
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
,
Chaïm Soutine
Chaïm Soutine (13 January 1893 – 9 August 1943) was a Belarusian painter who made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living and working in Paris.
Inspired by classic painting in the European tradition, exemplified by the ...
and
Salvador DalÃ
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalà i Domènech, Marquess of Dalà of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...
. He claims that the references to these artists are not direct quotations, but alterations and combinations of several works by different artists, although the artists whose work is appropriated do not always agree.
[Richard Alleyne]
How inspiration can be mistaken for imitation
''The Telegraph,'' 29 Nov 2000 (accessed 7 January 2014). As art critic
Michael Bracewell states, 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.
!['American Sublime' (2017) Glenn Brown](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/%27American_Sublime%27_%282017%29_Glenn_Brown.jpg)
Once the composition is found, the paint is applied in the artist's very specific process of painting. Brown's paintings, which are uniformly smooth in surface, typically offer a ''
trompe-l'Å“il
''Trompe-l'Å“il'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...
'' illusion of turbulent, painterly application. In fact, 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 particularly 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
otthe 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."
A lot of his titles refer to titles of albums, film titles,
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
literature, or a specific dedication to a person. The titles are not obviously connected to the paintings themselves and are not meant to be descriptive of the artwork. Instead they are intended to complement it. 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 matter in Glenn Brown's paintings ranges from his early science-fiction landscapes over abstract compositions and still lives to the 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, translucently white blind-looking eyeballs, unnatural skin colours and suggestions of foulness and smell emanating from figures' bodies. 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." 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, hallows placed over heads or red noses. In few of these amorphous and abstract forms, female figures are embedded within the mottling masses of unidentifiable matter.
Etchings
!['Half-Life (after Rembrandt) 1' (2016) Glenn Brown](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/%27Half-Life_%28after_Rembrandt%29_1%27_%282016%29_Glenn_Brown.jpg)
In 2008 Brown created a series of prints entitled "Layered Etchings (Portraits)" which were inspired by the artists
Urs Graf
Urs Graf (c. 1485 in Solothurn, Switzerland – possibly before 13 October 1528) was a Swiss Renaissance goldsmith, painter and printmaker (of woodcuts, etchings and engravings), as well as a Swiss mercenary. He only produced two etchings, one ...
, Rembrandt and
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...
. 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 for which a handful of etching plates were made. 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
Ridinghouse is a British book publisher specialising in art.
Ridinghouse’s publications are distributed by Cornerhouse in the UK and Europe, and by RAM Publications + Distribution, Inc. in North America.
Company history
Ridinghouse was foun ...
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.
Controversy
In 2000 Brown was accused of plagiarism by ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
''. Glenn Brown referenced a work by Anthony Roberts for a science fiction novel cover. The photographer
Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (born 16 August 1968) is a German photographer. His diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations.
Tillmans was the first photog ...
won the Turner prize that year, and a legal case brought by Roberts against Brown was settled out of court.
Public collections
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
, Chicago
Arts Council Collection
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...
, London
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, London
Delfina Foundation, London
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a non-profit contemporary arts institution based in Turin, Italy, founded by arts collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in 1995.
History
In 1995, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo established the Fo ...
, Turin
FRAC - Limousin, Limoges
Francois Pinault Foundation, Venice
Musée National d'Art Moderne
The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. In 2021 it ranked 10th in ...
, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Rennie Collection, Vancouver
Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
, London
The
Laing Art Gallery
The Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, is located on New Bridge Street West. The gallery was designed in the Baroque style with Art Nouveau elements by architects Cackett & Burns Dick and is now a Grade II listed building. It ...
, Newcastle
The Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of th ...
, New York
The New Art Gallery, Walsall
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...
, Minneapolis
V-A-C Collection, Moscow
Zabludowicz Collection, London
References
External links
Galerie Max Hetzler, Glenn Brown*https://vimeo.com/137309687 Glenn Brown lecturing at the College de France about his practice
* https://archive.today/20130703015419/http://www.culturecritic.co.uk/blog/culturecritic-interviews-glenn-brown/ CultureCritic interview with Glenn Brown on the occasion of his participation at SNAP Art Festival, Suffolk
Michael Stubbs, Glenn Brown and Keith Tyson in conversationGlenn Brown at the Frans Hals Museum.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Glenn
20th-century English painters
English male painters
21st-century English painters
21st-century English male artists
Living people
People from Hexham
1966 births
Alumni of Norwich University of the Arts
English contemporary artists
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
20th-century English male artists