Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
Roger Brown’s heavily silhouetted, stage like figures stand out amongst the Chicago Imagists, a group of 60s counter-culture artists who worked together in the Chicago art world. While most Imagists maintained a cartoonish, brightly colored, and dynamic style, Brown drew from his experience as a set designer and from his admiration of African art, pre-Renaissance Italian art, and thrifted objects (among other interests) to create completely unique imagery. He used these silhouetted figures often within skyscrapers or large buildings to address both the architectural and natural landscapes around him. The figures themselves were often concerned with Brown’s commentary of American culture, private social practices, and banal or dramatic events. In Untitled [Jack Daniels Bottle], Brown places his figures within a building fashioned out of a bottle of bourbon with almost every character seemingly in a sexually charged moment. Most of Brown’s figures appear in clearly defined cityscapes, but in this work the building is front and center making liquor, and its effects, a key part of his narrative. Within the bottle, male and female figures simply stare at each other as seen from open windows, though because of the intimate view into their personal lives, the presence of a few beds slightly out of frame, and the liquor bottle containing them, the sexual overtones are explicit. Though cheekier and simpler than many other works by Brown, Untitled [Jack Daniels bottle] is deceptive in its simplicity as it conveys much without providing a lot. His fascination with private society and what happens behind closed doors is clear in this piece, for it is both a reflection of Brown’s humor/personality and of human relationships with liquor and significant others in their own homes.