A COLLECTOR’S JOURNEY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM

Glenn Brown (b. 1966)
Robert H. Goddard Theory and Practice
each: signed and dated 'Glenn Brown 88' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas, in three parts
(i), (iii): 35¾ x 47¼in. (90.7 x 120cm.)
(ii): 35¾ x 29⅝in. (90.7 x 75.3cm.)
overall: 35¾ x 124⅛in. (90.7 x 315.3cm.)
Painted in 1988

Provenance:
Private Collection, UK (acquired directly from the artist).
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2004.

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Specialist Notes:

Executed in 1988, Glenn Brown’s Robert H. Goddard Theory and Practice is a remarkable early work by the artist that encapsulates the elements that would go on to define his practice. With its title referring to the theorist and engineer who anticipated many of the developments that would make spaceflight possible, the present work is a magnificent trompe l'oeil: on the left panel, the craters of the moon are rendered in subtle tones reminiscent of Picasso’s Blue Period. First appearing as a raised impasto surface, the craters reveal themselves to be carefully executed and impossibly smooth. In the centre panel Brown chooses to depict a young Goddard—not the father of modern rocket propulsion—but the average sickly school boy who distinguished himself in his predilection for the science-fiction fantasies of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. The third panel presents a monument of Modern architecture and specifically Nieuwe Bouwen: the Sanatorium Zonnestraal (Sunray Sanatorium) in the Netherlands, which was founded as an aftercare colony for tuberculosis patients, a disease which plagued Goddard throughout his life. Indeed the yellow tones that Brown has used to reimage Goddard can be seen as a subtle nod to his illness as yellow skin was a symptom of tuberculosis. Brown has studded his images with discrete black boxes, which are at once evocative of early computing and formally act to draw the viewer’s attention to the artifice of the image itself, belying Brown’s exquisite hyper-real painterly style.

The present work stands as one of Brown’s first moonscapes, highlighting what would become an enduring theme within the artist’s practice that would come to its climax in the mid-1990s with his re-imaginings of the fantastical science fiction landscapes of Chris Foss. Brown’s engagement with the theme as early as the 1980s speaks of pop culture's renewed interest in Science Fiction, with Star Wars, Alien, and Blade Runner launching a new branch of consumerism. But for the artist, the imagery explored in was also very much about a critical response to painting and the artistic landscape at the time. Speaking of this period, the artist recounted, ‘I was making the moonscape and modernist building paintings at the time and people were saying: “Why are you painting? There's no point, just rephotograph them.” Painting was considered extremely archaic at Goldsmiths in the early 90s but I knew I wanted to paint, I liked the process and its subtlety’ (G. Brown, quoted in S. Hepworth, ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me, London May 2000’, in Glenn Brown, exh. cat., Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan, 2000, p. 65).

In his moonscape panel especially, we see how Brown’s brushstrokes appear to create brilliant impasto paintings through thick decisive lines, yet on closer inspection the surfaces are flat, gleaming and perfectly smooth, refined through a staggering array of beautiful yet eerily hued patchworks of colour. Brown’s image of the young Goddard is culled from archival photography of the scientist. And his rendition of Sanatorium Zonnestraal has the anonymity of any image presented in an art history or architecture textbook. Indeed Brown retains an element of the original source by faithfully including the shadows and reflections of the bare tree limps on the building’s façade and windows. Continuing the legacy of Appropriation Art, established by Marcel Duchamp, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Sherry Levine and Richard Prince, where artists assumed existing images and projected them into a different context, Brown updates this strategy for the 21st century. In his exquisite treatment of paint, Brown elevates the banal to that of breath taking, transforming not only his source images, but our perceptions and judgments. Indeed Brown goes beyond the evacuated quotation of the original images, reconstructing their compositions, subjecting them to distortions, and ultimately imbuing them with a new sense of context and narrative. Just as Goddard’s experiments ushered in the Space Age so too does Brown’s imagery open up the viewer’s visual experience to new possibilities.

Robert H. Goddard Theory and Practice is one of our sale specialist, Amanda Lo Iacono’s, sale highlights. Read more about this and her other picks here.

Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.