Cecily Brown's 'We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea' at Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples

Cecily Brown's exhibition 'We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea' at Thomas Dane Gallery in Naples (2019) presents large-scale paintings that evoke the sea through intense chromatic sensuality. The title references Arthur Ransome's 1937 novel about four boys who accidentally sail into open sea, serving as a metaphor for the pictorial image as a site of losing and finding oneself. Brown's works, informed by Baroque and Mannerist construction and Romantic iconography, oscillate between figuration and abstraction, with rapid brushstrokes dissolving contours into complex structures. The exhibition includes cycles on bathers and shipwrecks, referencing Géricault's 'The Raft of the Medusa', Delacroix's 'The Massacre at Chios', and William Etty's 'The Sirens and Ulysses'. The gallery's Victorian-style rooms overlook the Gulf of Naples, contrasting white interiors with radiant blue outside, mirroring the paintings' interplay of water, skin, and light.