2004 Chapters (Layout Features)

Against Cliché: Glenn Brown and the Possibilities of Painting

Freedberg, David A.

Painting as an art form has long been declared dead, its possibilities often thought to be exhausted. But in this exhibition of his latest work, his finest and most mature to date, Glenn Brown raises the stakes. Irony and paradox abound. Consistency and elegance are quickly subverted in favour of more com- plex qualities. Brown’s affection for the clownish and the pantomimic seems at odds with the internal coherence of the group of work in this show. The thoughtful and often pointed elegance of his installation belies his inter- est in kitsch. ‘In all my works I want rich vulgarity and bawdiness’, he has said; while the high seriousness of his paintings is unquestionable, so too is the humour— sometimes wry, sometimes banal, most of all ironic.