Cecily Brown: The Triumph of Death

On Brown's colossal painterly interpretation of a 15th-century Italian fresco

The expressive, vividly chromatic paintings of British artist Cecily Brown (born 1969) straddle abstraction and figuration. Brown is famed for referencing both the giants of Western painting and facets of popular culture, wrestling each from their assigned contexts.
This volume provides an in-depth look at one of her most conceptually rich paintings yet. The titular work, The Triumph of Death, is colossal, spanning multiple panels, and conveys the figure of Death riding roughshod over a town and its residents. Inspired by a 1446 fresco housed in the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, Italy, Brown's momentous piece testifies to her ongoing fascination with death. With an introduction by Sylvain Bellenger and newly commissioned texts--as well as a set of related, previously unseen drawings--the book offers comprehensive analysis on this extraordinary work.