\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThey came to me only about six months before it was due to open, saying, \u2018Cecily, we\u2019re doing this thing, and we would love, if there\u2019s any chance, to get a painting for the restaurant,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cWell, I can\u2019t make a painting specifically for you that you could hang. I don\u2019t have anything that\u2019s 30-feet long kicking around.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Brown had always wanted to paint a mural on a restaurant, and was just waiting for someone to ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did say, \u2018Well, why don\u2019t I just do something directly on the wall?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
She had painted a mural in Buffalo a few years back, through Stefania Bortolami<\/strong>\u2019s Artist\/City program, and found it liberating to make public work freed from the shackles of the price tag.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the greedy, voracious art market, the minute you have a painting these days, the question of price starts swirling around, insurance, and all those unsexy things,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t want people sitting there saying, \u2018Oh, how much is it<\/em>?\u2019 So by doing it directly on the wall, it completely gets past all that. It can\u2019t be moved. It\u2019s not for sale. It\u2019s never for sale. It actually belongs to me. It\u2019s very freeing.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s also very Cecily Brown, very much in the thrust of her practice as a painter drawn toward the existential question of excess\u2014excess sex, yes, a theme present in her work, but also culinary excess, which crops up quite often. Take Lobsters, Oysters, Cherries, and Pearls<\/em> (2020), seen at her solo show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2023\u2014heaping platters of seafood spread across a table, begging to be masticated and savored. At Paula Cooper, in 2020, were a series of bravura paintings that dealt directly with gustatory bigness. A lush buffet supper with a woman, partially nude, imbibing. The Splendid Table<\/em> is a massive triptych showing caught game\u2014geese, ducks, rabbits, deer\u2014ready for slaughter, flame, and feast.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n