James Brown, Prehistoric New York: 1981–1986

Scaramouche Gallery, in its new exhibition space in Milan, Via Vezza d'Oglio 14, between Fondazione Prada and Fondazione ICA, inaugurates the show James Brown, Prehistoric New York: 1981–1986 on Saturday November 30th.

Following an extensive experience in New York, during which Daniele Ugolini directed the gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan until 2016, Scaramouche is reinforced by its partnership with Simone Ferretti and reopens to the public in the Lombard capital with a renewed program of international scope.

This first exhibition presents a vast selection of museum-caliber works by the American artist James Brown, born 1951 in Los Angeles and died tragically in a car accident together with his wife Alexandra Condon in Mexico in 2020. Through more than 30 historical works, among them large-scale canvases, works on paper, wood incisions, polychromatic terracottas, and unique graphic works, the exhibition aims to celebrate and analyze the Californian artist's imagery in the six most revealing and acclaimed years of his artistic pursuit – the years of New York Graffiti.

After his studies in painting and printing technique at the Immaculate College of Hollywood, Brown relocates to Paris in 1974 where he attends l'École de Beaux Arts. During his years in Paris he experiences a fascination with primitive art exhibited in public collections and ethnographic museums, and appreciates artists such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Jean Dubuffet with their differing perspectives in the exploration of so-called "primitivism", an element that proves crucial to all of Brown's future research. His first solo show arrives 4 years later at the Gemeentemuseum in Arnem, Netherlands, and following that he exhibits at Christiane and Eric Germain Gallery in Paris.

In 1979 he relocates to New York where he encounters artists from the burgeoning Neo-Expressionist movement of the East Village like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Julian Schnabel, Kenny Scharf, and Futura 2000. These encounters, together with influences derived from other important artist of the period such as Antoni Tàpies and Cy Twombly, shape Brown's language that reveals itself as an attempt to find a deeply personal idea of equilibrium between the figurative and abstraction. In New York he exhibits his work at Tony Shafrazi Gallery and Leo Castelli Gallery.

During these years he also works in Italy with Galleria di Lucio Amelio, Naples. In the six years from 1981 to 1986, Brown combines primitive elements derived from ritual contexts of the indigenous populations of Africa and America with informal abstractions and instinctive and explosive gestures. His poetry is concentrated on the coexistence of modernist tradition and archaic reminiscences of faraway and mysterious worlds. Recalling the experience of French Art Brut, Brown's stylized figures splinter apart, evoking masks, rites, mystical celebrations and impossible-to-resolve enigma. It is through this lens that the oxymoron of the exhibition's title, Prehistoric New York, should be interpreted: the city, an emblem of modernity, historically projected towards the future and the search for an evermore accentuated verticality, but also one that uncovers forgotten symbols, images and archetypes.... read the rest of the article»