The Pornography of Death (painting for Ian Curtis, after Chris Foss) 1995

Glenn Brown made "The Pornography of Death (painting for Ian Curtis, after Chris Foss)" with oil paint, but he somehow manages to make it look like enamel. There's a glossiness and smoothness to the surface that belies the typical materiality of oil paint. Look closely at the way Brown renders these floating islands, there is an incredible amount of detail, almost like an etching or an airbrush illustration. This attention to detail is a way for Brown to both pay homage to and critique his source material; the sci-fi book covers of Chris Foss. The title itself is a provocation, suggesting a kind of morbid fascination with the aesthetics of death and decay. Brown's work always plays with appropriation and re-contextualization. I think of John Currin; both artists are masters of taking something familiar and twisting it into something strange and unsettling. They remind us that art is always in conversation with itself, constantly reinterpreting and reimagining the past.