Aujourd’hui rose

“It is in this shadow world – one evoked not just by subject matter, but also by palette – that is so enticing when it arises amid a practice more often noted for its luscious and seductively bright hues.”
- Ian Alteveer in the catalogue for Cecily Brown’s Death and the Maid, currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cecily Brown has long been fascinated by memento mori and the visual duplicity often found in Victorian era imagery alluding to both youthfulness and death. It is this macabre sensibility around which Brown’s retrospective, Death And The Maid, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was curated.

In her newly released series of monotypes, Cecily Brown references a postcard from the 1900s produced by the Italian company Alterocca. In the postcard, the dark, curly hair of two young girls forms the eye sockets of a skull, the dog they are holding between them marking the nose. Text in the postcard reads “Aujourd’hui rose, demain…” or pink today, tomorrow…, a clear reminder that no matter how youthful or plentiful your riches, death is always knocking at the door.

Unlike much of Brown’s work, these images appear at first glance warm and innocent, belying their dark point of reference. The palette of pale pinks and minty greens is reminiscent of Rococo sensibilities. Working in oil paint, Brown’s brushstrokes appear loose and immediate, the subject less obscured than is typically seen in her work. In other ways, these monotypes fit perfectly into Brown’s oeuvre as they playfully refer to themes and imagery that have been explored by artists for centuries.