Adam and Eve (Expulsion from the Garden) (Primary Title)
Roger Brown, American, 1941 - 1997 (Artist)
“I began to synthesize a simple, direct technique with my interest in [Giorgio] de Chirico, comic book styles and the use of personal imagery from my own experience.” —Roger Brown
Brown was a leading member of the Chicago Imagists and, like others in this group, he employed vernacular subjects and a cartoonlike style that made his paintings and sculptures quickly and widely readable. Brown’s visual language included silhouetted forms that he combined with repetition and variation to make highly stylized images.
Adam and Eve (Expulsion from the Garden) presents a Biblical story that Brown chose for its wide familiarity. His selection of subject also reflects his childhood in a fundamentalist Baptist community, where he regularly heard cautionary tales about sinful ways. Other depictions of human tragedy occur throughout Brown’s work, demonstrating his interest in the dramatic and the spectacular.
A Figurative Perspective: Recent Paintings and Sculpture from the Virginia Museum, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, March 12 – May 21, 1989
Roger Brown, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, August 13 – October 18 1987; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, November 20, 1987 –¬ January 10, 1988; Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Miami, FL, February 11 – March 27, 1988; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, April 28 – June 12, 1988
Second Sight: Biennial IV, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, September 21 – November 16, 1986
An international Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 17 – August 7, 1984
Lawrence, Sidney, et al. Roger Brown. New York: George Braziller, 1987. Exhibition catalogue. (P. 9; No. 39, p. 66 color ill.).
Beal, Graham W. J. Second Site: Biennial IV. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1986. Exhibition catalogue. (No. 9, p. 22-23; p. 59).
Brandt, Frederick R. Late 20th Century Art. Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1985. (No. 10, p. 24-25).
McShine, Kynaston. An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984. (B/w ill. p. 69).
Tully, Judd. "McShine’s Neo-Olympian Derby", Arts World 8, no. 9 (June 1984): 1, 8. (B/w ill. p. 1).
[1] Purchased from Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, March 3, 1982
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