A nchored by the human body, Cecily Brown’s paintings divulge intimate passages of flesh via a constellation of luscious brushstrokes, making no clear distinction between abstraction and figuration; rather, her work is concerned with translating sensation into paint. Together these gestural marks and gluts of paint posit a recapitulation of the canonical tradition of the painted nude. Hard, Fast and Beautiful, painted in 2000, demonstrates Brown’s transition away from full abstraction so distinctive in her early oeuvre to a more figurative form. The final effect is a heightened awareness of emotions and energy.

Throughout Brown’s career, she has drawn on inspiration from literature, pop culture, theatre and movies. Playing with themes of fantasy and illusion, their vast, volatile surfaces conjure both the grandeur and the instability of the silver screen. Many of Brown’s works from the late 1990s and early 2000s, including the present, allude to classic films in their titles: Suddenly Last Summer, Dog Day Afternoon, Trouble in Paradise, Night Passage or Interlude. Robert Evrén compares her canvases to sudden plot twists: “The paintings are like doors flung open suddenly to reveal something shocking. Because they are so energetic they might also be viewed as moments of a movie whose sudden arrest causes the mind’s eye to trip over itself in its own voracity, tangling in dense webs of colored light, striving to mark order of intense and disordered sensations” (Robert Evrén, cited in: Exh Cat. Rome, Gagosian Gallery, Cecily Brown, 2011, p. 1).

Paintings from this period of Brown’s oeuvre draw on inspiration of the history of painting, plundering imagery from Bosch, Bruegel, Titian, Delacroix, Degas, Schiele, Picasso and Bacon. Perhaps most evidently, Brown’s visual language and handling of pigment and paint is informed by the gestural mark-making of the American Abstract Expressionists. Indeed, Brown’s tenacious and immersive brushwork is an affirmation of Willem de Kooning’s famous mantra that "flesh was the reason oil paint was invented." Brown’s continuous representation of sexual themes have been a central role in her work since the very beginning; her imagery and brushstroke both evidence of De Kooning’s influence. As Brown has explained: “I think I was doing a lot of sexual paintings… what I wanted – in a way that I think now is too literal – was for the paint to embody the same sensations that bodies would. Oil paint very easily suggests bodily fluids and flesh… I've always wanted to have a lot of different ways of saying something… so that you might have a veil of paint that suggests some very delicate skin” (the artist in conversation with Gaby Wood in: Gaby Wood, ‘I Like it Cheap and Nasty’, The Guardian, 12 June 2005, online).

Hard, Fast and Beautiful emits a simple sophistication: wispy charcoal and white gestures, reminiscent of life drawings or underpainting, containing a carnal impression, depicting one of her most used images within her oeuvre. Brown approached abstraction as an aftermath of two lovers rolling around on the canvas. Just like Yves Klein had done in his Anthropométrie, using the human body as an anthropomorphic brush, Brown uses a brush to create the same effect. Contrary to her male predecessors, Cecily Brown removes the male perspective and shifts it towards the female’s fantasy – dreamy, raw and previously unexplored.

A visceral and commanding exploration of painting’s elusive power of suggestion, Hard, Fast and Beautiful encapsulates the ethos of Brown’s singular artistic project. Its evocation of human flesh through bold gesture perfectly illustrates the artist’s reflection that she wants “there to be a human presence without having to depict it in full” (the artist in conversation with Lari Pittman in: Dore Ashton, Cecily Brown, New York, 2008, p. 28). Wholly irresistible, Hard, Fast and Beautiful engages the medium of painting itself, capitalizing on the sensuality of her materials and ability to playfully manipulate the viewer’s perception through descriptive possibilities.