CECILY BROWN.

In Cecily Brown’s previous show, the paintings were quite large and strong. In this show, the strong one seemed buried under a quantity of weak ones.
 
We feel that since Brown’s subject matter never changes, and the way she applies the paint pretty much never changes, her content is 12 years old and boring.
 
This work is all commercial and it does nothing for us. We guess she has something else in her too, just wish she would try.
 
“I’ve been trying to get away from always having couples and sex”, she says.
‘Untitled 92’ and ‘Untitled 84’ appear reasonably successful on the Gagosian website, but are virtually indistinguishable from one another in the exhibition. Needless to say, it wasn’t a good idea to run ten of those paintings in a row.
 
The problem is not, as some critics might say, that Ms Brown is no Willem de Kooning. It is that you want her to deliver something brash and liberating. Is she for any reason covering up something in herself? Because there is too much frosting to taste the cake. “The image does come and go as I am working” she says, “but I’m not trying to hide things.”
 
We really really really tried to like Cecily Brown’s paintings, even though they command big bucks and are sought after by the Broads, the Saatchis and the Newhouses of the collecting world.