Curated by Suzanne Cotter

London-born, New York–based Cecily Brown has gone far—indeed too far, her detractors often complain. The artist’s popularity in the glamour press may blind certain viewers to her work’s virtues: To paint in a brash, gestural, figurative style may look retrograde, but this is among the qualities that makes Brown’s work . . . radical? That she does so without the bang-bang-you’re-dead “ironies” of so many European painters of the Kippenbergian claque is refreshing, too. With some fifteen large-scale paintings made in the past five years and a selection of works on paper, as well as her 1995 animated film Four Letter Heaven, Modern Art Oxford’s deep focus on Brown’s recent work should give doubters a chance to reconsider. Don’t hate her because she’s beautiful.

— David Rimanelli