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Sunday 16 February

James Brown: Explorer of Invisible Worlds

Published on: 23 November 2024

By: Hervé Lancelin

Category: Art review

Reading time: 6 minutes

James Brown transcended the boundaries of contemporary art by merging primitive traditions with Western modernism. His perpetual journey between Los Angeles, Paris, New York, and Mexico reflects a unique artistic vision, oscillating between the rawness of gesture and compositional sophistication.

Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, let me tell you about James Brown (1951-2020), not the King of Soul Music, but the American artist who transcended the boundaries of contemporary art with rare audacity and intellectual integrity, qualities so sorely lacking in many contemporary artists. A creator who dared to challenge academic conventions while deeply drawing inspiration from primitive traditions and Western modernism, navigating these worlds with an almost unbearable precision of grace.

Let’s start with his visceral relationship with pictorial materiality, which defines his first creative period. In the 1980s, while the New York art market indulged in neo-expressionism and some artists churned out works assembly-line style to satisfy the frenzied demand of collectors, Brown developed a unique approach to semi-figurative painting that transcended the fashions of the moment. His works from this period reveal a palpable tension between the rawness of gesture and the sophistication of composition, exploding the traditional categories of art history.

This is precisely what Theodor Adorno would have called “determinate negation” in his Aesthetic Theory—a work that refuses established conventions while creating its own internal rules. Brown’s pictorial surfaces retain traces of their creation like scars bearing witness to their genesis, but these marks are never gratuitous. Every scarification of the canvas, every layer of paint contributes to a rigorous construction that defies superficial analysis.

Take his black paintings from the 1980s. Brown carved simplified motifs into the still-wet paint, creating works that evoke prehistoric petroglyphs. But reducing these pieces to a mere reference to the primitive would miss their intellectual complexity. These engravings in the pictorial material create a sophisticated interplay between surface and depth, recalling Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on the phenomenology of perception. The surface is no longer merely a support but becomes a tactile and visual field of exploration where the viewer’s gaze is constantly challenged.

His training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris during the 1970s is crucial to understanding his artistic development. His rebellion against classical teaching was not mere posturing by an angry young artist. It represented a genuine philosophical stance on the very nature of contemporary art. By rejecting academic constraints while choosing to stay in Paris, Brown demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of what Roland Barthes called the “death of the author”. It wasn’t about rejecting all tradition but about reappropriating codes to subvert them.

Traveling through Europe, especially Italy, profoundly shaped his practice. The influence of medieval Italian painting is evident in his use of pictorial space and his treatment of the human figure. But Brown doesn’t merely cite these historical references; he transforms them through the prism of his contemporary sensibility. As Walter Benjamin might have said, he creates a “dialectical image” where past and present collide productively.

This first period culminates in his New York exhibitions of the 1980s, notably at Tony Shafrazi and Leo Castelli. In the effervescent context of the East Village, his works stood out for their refusal of easy spectacle. While some of his contemporaries succumbed to market allure, Brown maintained an artistic integrity that commands respect. His paintings from this era bear affinities with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work, but without ever falling into imitation. There is a rigor in Brown’s work that transcends easy comparisons.

His relocation to Mexico in 1995 marked a new turning point in his practice. In Oaxaca, Brown developed an approach that integrated local traditions while maintaining his contemporary language. His collaboration with local artisans in creating traditional rugs was not mere cultural appropriation. It represented what Jacques Rancière would call a “distribution of the sensible”, a redistribution of roles and skills that challenged the traditional hierarchy of art.

The creation of Carpe Diem Press with his wife Alexandra is also significant. This publishing house, which produces limited-edition artist books using traditional printing methods, represents a natural extension of his artistic practice. It’s not just about producing beautiful objects but creating spaces for dialogue between different traditions and artistic practices.

Brown’s second period begins with his exploration of cosmic abstraction and spiritual quest. Starting in 2004, he embarked on a monumental project, The Realm of Chaos and Light, inspired by Gustav Holst’s The Planets, creating a series of 81 abstract paintings organized into constellations of nine. This endeavor might seem pretentious if it weren’t supported by a rigorous methodology reminiscent of Wassily Kandinsky’s studies on the correspondence between music and painting.

In these works, Brown developed a unique technique: he began by placing points and blotches of paint on raw linen canvas, creating a random cartography that he then connected with fine pencil lines. This method recalls Paul Klee’s work on the active line, but Brown added a cosmological dimension that transcends simple geometry. The forms emerging from this process—asteroids, black holes, constellations—are not mere representations but portals to a transcendent experience.

The pencil connections between points create an irregular network that evokes both celestial constellations and neural structures. Brown thus creates what Michel Foucault might have called “pictorial heterotopias”, spaces that exist simultaneously in the physical and mental realms.

What’s fascinating about The Realm of Chaos and Light series is how Brown achieves a precarious balance between control and chance. Each canvas results from a rigorous process that leaves room for the unexpected. This approach recalls John Cage’s reflections on the role of chance in artistic creation, but with a spiritual dimension unique to Brown. He creates what Gilles Deleuze might have called “desiring machines”, assemblages that produce and channel the desire for transcendence.

Brown’s work on this series reveals impressive technical mastery. The arcs or angular bands of colors close to blues and browns build forms suggesting asteroids and black holes. But these forms are never fully defined; they remain in a state of perpetual becoming, actively engaging the viewer’s imagination.

In The Realm of Chaos and Light, Brown achieves a pictorial sublimation that transcends his usual production. These works, particularly in their monumental formats, embody what Kandinsky called the “inner necessity” of art—a moment when matter becomes spirit. Museums and collectors have recognized this, fervently seeking these paintings, which, like contemporary theophanies, manifest the precise moment where chaos and light fuse in a cosmic dance.

The influence of his Mexican years is particularly evident in his late chromatic palette. The earthy tones and ochres recall the landscapes of Oaxaca, but these colors are used in ways that transcend direct references to the landscape. Brown demonstrates a profound understanding of what Gaston Bachelard called the “psychology of matter”, a sensitivity to the intrinsic qualities of materials and colors.

His intensified collage practice in the 1990s deserves special attention. Far from merely referencing Picasso and Braque’s synthetic cubism, Brown reinvented the medium by introducing a spiritual dimension that transcends formal play. His collages often incorporate natural elements—corals, shells, photographs of tropical fish—into compositions suggesting profound connections between the microcosm and the macrocosm.

Brown’s works on paper reveal a remarkable economy of means that recalls the Zen concepts of “wabi-sabi”. In the 24 Drawings from a Treasure Room series (1994–95), the drawings suggest recognizable objects—a vessel, a pearl necklace, a boat, a face, a schematic swan—but these forms remain barely legible, like fleeting apparitions in a pictorial mist.

What’s truly remarkable about Brown is that he maintained a deep coherence across a multifaceted practice encompassing painting, sculpture, ceramics, and publishing. Brown chose the path of complexity and constant exploration. His insatiable curiosity and intellectual rigor make him a model for a genuinely contemporary artistic practice. Brown transcends the easy oppositions between abstraction and figuration, spirituality and materiality, tradition and innovation.

His tragic death in 2020 in a car accident in Mexico, alongside his wife Alexandra, almost serves as a metaphor for his life: always in motion, always between two worlds. But his work remains, a vibrant testament to a life dedicated to exploring the boundaries between the visible and invisible, the material and spiritual, order and chaos. In an art world often dominated by cynicism and superficiality, the integrity and depth of his approach shine like a beacon in the night.

Reference(s)

James BROWN (1951-2020)
First name: James
Last name: BROWN
Gender: Male
Nationalitie(s):

  • United States of America

Age: 69 years old (2020)

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