Interview

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Few painters incite critical admonishment the way Delia Brown does. Not without reason: Brown's figurative paintings of privilege (often her own, sometimes in pastels) refuse to partake in a certain slavish seriousness that accomanies criticism. Her paintings of her friends enjoying themselves can feel like a stand-up comedian asking "jealous?" (with no less sense of irony, but nonetheless); moreover, her provocations of feminine viewership partake in voyeurism and exploitation without a knowing critical wink. Brown's handling is similarly deadpan: The slack, slick color palate evidences equal parts determined skill and pastiche. Brown's latest series of seven oil-on-linen paintings, Guerilla Villa (her personal working title is "In There Like Swimwear"), is a commission for the most notorious tropical paparazzi stomping ground, luxury hotel Eden Rock in St. Barth. Brown and friends had their way with some serious beachfront property, and a few anonymous poolboys. What better way to her thumb her nose at critics—except, perhaps, to paint them next?
 

ALEX GARTENFELD: Tell me about this show at Eden Rock. How does the context, that it's a tropical place of leisure, tropical this affect the reception of your paintings?

DELIA BROWN: The hotel invited me down to make work that is "inspired" by the island of St Barth. I brought a couple of girlfriends down with me, and we spent a week wreaking havoc. It was a lot of fun: The hotel gave us access to several of their villas, and also arranged entry onto a yacht and a beautiful private residence perched on top of the island.


AG: But it's part of your own series.

DB: Guerilla Villa is the most recent manifestation of an ongoing project I've been working on for about eight years, which I call guerilla lounging. Guerilla Lounging involves gaining entry into private residences and exclusive spaces, and taking them over. I assert my subjectivity onto them, playing out fantasies of ownership and privilege, and basically having a good time with my friends. The paintings document this action, while doubling as a kind of contemporary version of the 18th and 19th Century genre scenes that depicted the lives of the bourgeoisie.

AG: In previous versions of guerilla lounging you accessed the homes of art patrons. How is the context of a hotel different?

DB: There is a more universal, less personal, aesthetic, one that is about leisure above all. That (and the fact that we were on an island covered with tropical foliage) inspired me to get more literal with the connotations of "guerilla," so I decked my girls out in camouflage and Che Guevara-type berets and red stars. The idea of playing out a jungle-revolutionary fantasy on a First World island, with the insinuation of riot and violence turning evanescing into posture felt dangerous to me. So, armed with Thorsten Veblen's classic Theory of the Leisure Class, we hit the villas and prepared for action.


AG: To you, what type of domestic space is a hotel? Does it have specific access to femininity-other than the connotations of a motel?

DB: The gendering of public spaces is an interesting idea, but it isn't what drives me. If a space has a certain level of sensuality to it, it will be fun to play in, and interesting to paint. Because my own sensibility is more rococo, I guess I am naturally drawn to more feminine spaces; but the Eden Rock has a natural, organic feeling to it, as if it evolved out of the habitat of its surroundings, which to me feels gender-neutral. There is nothing that feels overly stylized. The people who stay there have more to do with how kind fabulous or trendy it seems at a given time. A tabula rasa, if you will.

AG: If you get a commssion to paint at, says, a hotel, how do you decide which of your friends get to go with you?

DB: It's the people who I know like to ham it up a lot for the camera, because the images of people clowing & throwing attitude are most fun to paint.

AG: What's your favorite hotel?

DB: A few years ago I spent a couple of nights on the island of Ischia, off Naples, Italy. The hotel was the Regina e Isabella. It's an old health resort, and the island has many natural mineral pools which people have flocked to over the centuries for their supposed healing properties. It's an aging pink edifice on the sea. You could walk to the old home of Lucchino Visconti and take a tour, but even more exciting was the dinner... All you can eat, a cornucopia of local fishes and grilled vegetables. Two nights dining alone there, looking onto the Bay of Naples, with no less than five waiters fulfilling my every gastronomic desire (pushing pastas, cheese carts, dessert carts and wines), I helplessly gained several pounds in two days.

AG: Was there a really weird Hotel?

DB: Two girlfriends and I arrived in Tulum one afternoon in 1997. This was before Tulum became the destination for eco-tourists that it is today. All that was available for lodging were palapa-huts on the beach. For $10 a night, we took up residence in a little hut with a sand floor, no electricity, and a cot for a bed. The only toilet was 50 meters away, so in the middle of the night, one had to light a candle and venture across the dark sands to the bathroom, and there would be huge sand-crabs crawling everywhere!

AG: Do you paint from memory?

DB: I work from photos and occasionally, from life. When you paint from memory the images look like fantasies—which is okay, but it's a totally different animal. Just like in literature, I prefer straight naturalism to magical realism. I think I see naturalism as having more polemical possibility.

AG: If you could paint one mother, who would it be?

DB: Actually, I would love to paint a grandmother.

AG: Who's your fantasy grandmother?

DB: The great painter Dorothea Tanning. the widow of Max Ernst. I have a great mom, but my grandmother died about ten years ago, and I have been looking for her ever since. I courted Miss Tanning with letters and flowers and she finally agreed to meet me a few years ago. She invited me to her amazing apartment filled with great dada and surrealist works, and we polished off a bottle of champagne. But she didn't want me to paint her I guess she would rather be remembered as the 30-year-old hottie rather than the (beautiful) 95-year-old. Too bad for me. I was in love.

Guerrilla Villa opens tonight, and is on view through the end of March.