Don Brown at Sadie Coles

Don Brown at Sadie Coles

26 February, 2009
by: Katuschka

Don Brown's new exhibition at Sadie Coles sees the artist returning to a recurring theme, creating more images of his waif-like spouse and muse Yoko. Brown attempts to re-imagine his wife as an everywoman, with intricately detailed, delicate sculpture and a distinct abundance of nipple. Brown's work makes me think that sometimes it would be ideal to be the floaty, elfin muse to a sensitive and talented artist, spending the day being wrought into an icon of womanhood. But then again, sitting around in your underwear in a cold studio for hours might lose its bohemian lustre pretty quickly.

Yoko has been portrayed in various guises of undress: pregnant, with a bowl-fringe, resting in a chair and a version of herself doubled in silver. The sculptures idolise her model physique and petite features as a notably modern silhouette, bringing the God-like forms of the Greco-Roman style of sculpture into the 21st century with a more naturalistic look. 

It would be interesting to gauge a reaction to this show based on gender. These sculptures don't appear to be directly designed to titillate, and yet they implore you to look and scrutinise his wife's naked body in sharp and precise rendering, whilst juxtaposed with traditional images of beauty in art. In Brown's book, Yoko, written in the third person, the artist himself describes Yoko as a Lolita figure; and comparisons with Degas' Little Dancer Girl do little to dispel this notion.

However it seems there is another issue at play here which makes Brown's work verge on the disturbing – his sculptures are drawn to half or a third Yoko's size and are crafted with obsessive detail. This seems to highlight the intensity of the relationship between muse and artist, where somebody knows every inch of your body well enough to draw it to scale – a trait which perversely seems romantic in an extra-marital arrangement such as Andrew Wyeth and Helga  – but as a facet of a married partnership seems over-bearing and possessive. From the pigtailed, 'death-mask' Spiritualized album cover to these new works, Yoko appears to be the passive and silent partner, more object than woman and one on a particularly vertigo-inducing pedestal at that. Her seeming acceptance to be objectified and her ease with her body are what denies Brown's purpose, he has not created an everywoman, but a goddess.

There are touches of humanity to these images – Yoko's awkward pose, her quirky sense of style and her 'twin's' tender hand on her hip – but the sculptures still seem impersonal and lacking in warmth. Interestingly, Yoko was present at the opening night, a stylish, beautiful and vibrant young woman, easily recognisable as the source of Brown's adulation, but I felt there was only a small percentage of her personality in his work. Perhaps there is a more fitting tribute to her which Brown has yet to make. 

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