is best known for large-scale canvases filled with bravura brushstrokes that exert a certain visual magic. They reward long and careful looking, appearing abstract on first glance and eventually resolving into suggestive figures. Such compositions often conjure female bodies and scenes from the West’s most famous paintings. It’s no wonder they enjoy a rare appeal: Brown’s canvases have been beloved for over two decades without pandering to trends, connecting to various art historical and contemporary interests while retaining a singular, recognizable, and evolving style.
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were at the top. Gagosian quickly located and listed a prime Oehlen canvas last March, selling the untitled 1988 painting for $6 million—a new record for a public sale of his work. This success gave Gagosian leverage to bargain with its desired Brown consignors. The gallery was already in negotiations for Figures in a Landscape I in late 2019, and Orlofsky said “the stakes and the importance of online viewing rooms got higher” in recent months as the entire art world transitioned online. The canny sale gave the canvas the attention of an auction house cover lot at a time when auction houses were forced to postpone their own sales. In other words, the Brown sale displayed how a gallery’s ability to work nimbly could trump the creakier levers of an auction house at a chaotic, uncertain time.
, it’s easy for Galperin and Gagosian to compare her prices to those of such 20th-century luminaries. De Kooning’s record is $300 million, Bacon’s is $142.2 million, and Mitchell’s is $16.6 million. Given a few decades, as the art world continues to rethink its chronic undervaluation for work by women, why shouldn’t Brown’s prices reach these heights?
, another Brit who makes monumental canvases about the female body—and holds the record for most expensive living female artist, with her $12.4-million painting Propped (1992). “Brown is well positioned to achieve prices many times higher than she has to date,” said McLeod.