Black Painting 1

The source image for this edition, Cecily Browns Black Painting 1 (2002), belongs to a series of paintings the artist initiated as a mechanism for exploring desire. Inspired by 19th Century French erotica and the art of Francisco Goya, Black Painting 1 centers around a solitary figure surrounded by a range of lustful, ghostly suitors. Imbued with Browns unique sensibility fusing intimacy with complexity, the sombre palette employed for this work reinforces the psychological charge of the scene, as well as the tenuous boundaries between pleasure and torment.