Roger Brown
Just Around the Corner (Part I & Part II)

1975
Oil on canvas diptych
Each titled on the overlap verso
Canvases each: 36" x 60"
Provenance: Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago, Illinois;
Private Collection, Los Angeles, California (acquired directly from the above, 1982)
Together with letter from Phyllis Kind Gallery
LAMA would like to thank Lisa Stone, Curator of the Roger Brown Study Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), for her assistance in cataloguing this work
Illustrated: The Annual, June 5-August 28. San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, 1977. N. pag.
Exhibited: "The Annual," Group Exhibition, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, June 5-August 28, 1977

American sculptor, painter, and collector Roger Brown (1941–1997) was a defining figure in the postwar Chicago art scene, though the range of his influences and artistic impact were national. Brown was raised in Alabama, and lived and worked in places as diverse as Chicago, the town of New Buffalo, Michigan, and the village La Conchita near Ventura, California. While attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Brown was introduced to the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper, and René Magritte—artists whose influences are discernable in Brown's vibrant, clear, figural work. During this time, Brown formed a deep admiration for self-taught artists including Henri Rousseau, and Brown became an avid and esteemed collector of folk art and Outsider Art. In the early 1960s, Brown was a leading member of a cadre of fantastical-figurative Chicago painters who styled themselves "The Hairy Who"—a playful moniker meant to mock the self-importance of the art world. Members of the group and associated artists working in the city at the time are now best known as the Chicago Imagists.




Brown's masterful diptych of 1975, Just Around the Corner (Part I & Part II), epitomizes his idiomatic style. The piece depicts a mountainous road passing under the shadow of a group of buildings. The windows of the dwellings reveal silhouettes of people interacting—talking, holding hands, or otherwise reaching out to each other. The imagery suggests all manner of human exchange, while also referencing industrialization and municipal developments like Chicago's ailing housing projects. In this work, Brown also explores ideas of perspective and dimensionality: the canvases are meant to be installed in a corner of a room, to immerse the viewer in its setting. A letter from Phyllis Kind Gallery in 1982 notes that "this is the only painting to date in which [Brown] utilizes two panels and a corner format."




In 1971, Phyllis Kind gave Brown his first solo show, and the gallery would go on to represent the artist throughout his career. In 1987, Brown was featured in a retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. His work received widespread exposure in the 1990s through his two cover illustrations for Time magazine, and the 54-foot-long mosaic mural he created for the NBC Tower in Chicago. At his death, Brown bequeathed his three homes and their contents to the Art Institute of Chicago, and they are now administered as educational facilities that include the Roger Brown Study Collection in Chicago. The artist was posthumously inducted into the city's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Hall of Fame in 2004.




Brown's career is being further examined in current research projects that will lead to a planned series of 2018 exhibitions on Midwestern art organized by Chicago's Terra Foundation of American Art—a program that will be the regional equivalent of the Getty Foundation's "Pacific Standard Time" initiative.




An Overview of Roger Brown's Gifts. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2014. Pes, Javier. "Terra Foundation Plans 'Pacific Standard Time' for Chicago." The Art Newspaper Oct. 2014&358; n. pag. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.
Estimate: $20000 - $30000