Joan Brown (American, 1938-1990)

Mary Julia and David #7
Signed, titled, and dated on champagne bottle: “Mary Julia and David#7, Joan Brown, 9/19/76”
Acrylic on paper
36 x 24 inches
Matted and framed: 44 ½ x 32 ½ in.

Provenance:
Alan Frumkin Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Massachusetts

Subject:
Painted in September of 1976, Mary Julia and David #7, is the product of a very emotionally-charged period in Joan Brown’s career, which was galvanized by her divorce from husband and fellow San Francisco artist, Gordon Cook. It is a painting that embodies the unique and burgeoning features of her art during 1976 in its new handling and use of color as influenced by the Impressionists, its fascination with the theme of romanticism and intimacy between men and women, and its overall rectangular and flat composition with hastily sketched and highly simplified forms.

The figures in the painting as identified by Joan Brown in the title are Mary Julia (last name, Raahauge Klimenko) and David (last name, Peugh), both close friends of the artist and figures who appear frequently in her art of 1976. Each figure is easily identified in Brown’s compositions by distinguishing features such as David’s mustache and Mary Julia’s black top-knot. Another feature of her art during this watershed year was her tendency to paint works in a series, each number in the title, referring to a scene that was part of a larger story.

Yet, despite the clear transformation that took place in her art during 1976, Joan Brown retained her characteristic primitive and highly evocative style that remained steadfastly indifferent to traditional norms of form and aesthetic.

Artist:
Joan Brown was an exceptional figure in the history of Bay Area painting who was known for her highly idiosyncratic and introspective body of work. A graduate of the California School of Fine Arts in 1960, Brown, whose mentor was the famed Bay Area figurative artist Elmer Bischoff, was initially recognized as an influential member of the second generation of figurative artists. Resultantly, her early work reflects the Bay Area figurative style in its vibrant palette, energetic paint handling, and a concentration on the gestural act of painting. However, unlike her male predecessors Brown’s work was set apart by her choice of more intimate subject matter such as her extensive travels, her domestic life, her son, and her family pets.

In 1960 at the young age of twenty-two Brown was awarded her first solo exhibition at the Staemphli Gallery in New York City where enthusiasm for the Bay Area Figurative artists had taken hold. Her youth, talent, and the fact that she was female earned her wide recognition early in her lifetime and would continue until her untimely death in 1990. Over the course of her life, Brown’s work went through various evolutions, often catalyzed by her numerous marriages to fellow artists. As she aged her characteristic thick layers of paint thinned and her compositions became markedly more fantastical, blurring the line between reality and absurdity and incorporating a burgeoning passion in eastern spirituality.

Joan Brown is remembered as one of the most celebrated American figurative and abstract expressionist painters to emerge from the Bay Area. Her prolific output leaves behind an extensive body of work that is recognized for its pioneering creativity, vision, and unique sense of whimsy.