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Fair of Face, Full of Woe

Cecily Brown British
2008
Not on view
This small-scale triptych demonstrates Brown’s characteristic use of highly expressionistic and densely layered brushstrokes that tend to blur distinctions between the representational and the abstract. Initially the painting appears devoid of recognizable subject matter, yet closer inspection reveals hints of bodily fragments entangled among lushly rendered landscapes. There is a shared materiality between flesh and paint, which Brown suggestively exploits for both optic and erotic charge. Like the title, which references an English fortune-telling nursery rhyme, the painting exists in constant flux, its visual fate determined by each new viewer.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Fair of Face, Full of Woe
  • Artist: Cecily Brown (British, born London, 1969)
  • Date: 2008
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: each canvas: 17 1/8 × 12 5/8 × 1 5/16 in. (43.5 × 32.1 × 3.3 cm)
    three canvases: 17 1/8 in. × 38 in. × 1 5/16 in. (43.5 × 96.5 × 3.3 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Calvin Tomkins and Dodie Kazanjian, 2009
  • Object Number: 2009.533a-c
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Cecily Brown
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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The Arrest, Cecily Brown British, Softground etching
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Cecily Brown
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Chairing the Members, Cecily Brown British, Softground etching on blue paper
Chairing the Members
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2004
Untitled
Cecily Brown
August 2003
Adoration of the Lobster, Cecily Brown British, Oil on UV-curable pigment on linen
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Untitled, Cecily Brown British, Etching with aquatint, drypoint, and softground etching
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