Working from photographs, Glenn Brown remakes and retitles paintings by other artists such as Salvador Dali, Karel Appel, and Frank Auerbach. Unlike the studied imitation of old masters common to 18th-century painting that offered tribute, Brown’s brand of deconstruction suggests a critique of his commercially successful predecessors.

For this work, Brown focused on the central section of Auerbach’s Head of Julia (1983). During a laborious five-month period of painting, Brown replicated Auerbach’s original brush strokes, slightly altering the color, and greatly increasing their scale. Instead of simply reproducing a recognizable image, Brown invites “a slow and ambiguous reading” from the viewer that demands reflection on the process of painting.