16/03/2026
Cecily Brown ‘The 5 Senses’
Ditone print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm. Edition of 100. Size: 47 x 50 cm.
Cecily Brown’s paintings engage the senses through their erotic imagery, energetic brushwork and tactile richness. The composition, built from dense layers of brushstrokes and abundant white paint, draws inspiration from The Five Senses (1617–18), a series created collaboratively by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens. In those five oil paintings, Rubens depicts an allegorical female figure placed within elaborate, meticulously detailed settings painted by Brueghel, inspired by the courtly world of the Spanish Netherlands.
While the original series represents each sense separately, Brown merges them visually, though traces of the earlier iconography remain. A stringed instrument is visible near the lower edge of the canvas; at the center appear a fountain—surrounded in the original by fragrant flowers—alongside a dish holding oysters and a lobster; and further to the left one can discern what may be the globe associated with the allegory of sight.
Reviews of Brown’s major retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2023 frequently emphasized the importance of the act of seeing in her work. The 5 Senses, however, suggests something broader: the simultaneity of sensory experience within the medium of painting. This emphasis reflects how Brown’s practice foregrounds both the physical presence of paint and the bodily act of making it. By proposing that painting can activate all five senses, the work also playfully reasserts the medium’s expressive power.
Cecily Brown will present a major exhibition at Serpentine South Gallery this month.
Cecily Brown: Making Pictures
Serpentine South Gallery
27 March – 6 September 2026
Free entry.