de Lacy-Brown

[webofevil]

I had not previously encountered Nicholas “allergic to chavs” de Lacy-Brown, since I have the same aversion to The Apprentice that others have to Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Office; too much watching through your fingers and biting your knuckles is required of the viewer.

He was, for the uninitiated, the first contestant to get “fired” from this series, to his evident astonishment; after all, he is, according to his own biography, “undoubtedly a man of many talents”. The talent he has chosen to display on his website is his art. Let’s have a butcher’s.

I’d like to get out of the way a picture that’s pretty good. I don’t think it’s good because of the subject matter, before anyone starts. I like the technique and he actually achieves what he sets out to do.


Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, Cityscape I: London

And there are one or two of Paris and Venice that aren’t bad either, in a 1980s Athena kind of way. See, I don’t want to be accused of being unremittingly negative, it’s so easy to criticise, etc etc. But seriously, what the hell else are you supposed to do in the face of this?


Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, Heartbreak I


Or this?


Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, Sophocles’ Antigone


“All of my portraits say something about my personality, though much of what you may interpret is subconscious and beyond even my intention.” Mmm.


Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, Mother and Child


It swiftly becomes clear that on no account must this man ever be allowed near the human face.


Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, Lara/Her Perfect Smile

For all I know, in the flesh this girl really does resemble a Billie Piper inflatable, in which case he’s an uncanny portraitist, but my money’s on “not”.


For me, one of the most problematic things here is his “La Segunda Guernica”, a rework of Picasso’s, um, “Guernica”, on which de Lacy-Brown has written an essay. The original is, he concludes, “one of the most important artistic works ever produced”, and such is its relevance to today’s political situation that what it really needs is to be redone as a heartfelt response to the Madrid train bombings.


Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, La Segunda Guernica

This guy honestly wouldn’t understand what was misjudged or horribly exploitative about this picture if you sat him down and explained it with simple diagrams and Duplo.

The pictures that unsettle me the most, though, aren’t the obvious lurid clashes of colour or ridiculous imagery, but things like this, which are technically pretty proficient but seem utterly dead. For no good reason that I can pin down, this is exactly what I would expect American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman to paint:


Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, Silver Surfer, Goring-by-Sea

“Nicholas, born in West Sussex, first exhibited at the age of thirteen, with a depiction of all thirty-seven of Shakespeare’s plays which was met with rapturous reviews by local press.” Okay, I’ll stop now, it’s too easy. But I recommend trawling his site for a horrified giggle.

One thing his biography omits is that his name was simply Brown, and he adopted “de Lacy” from his grandmother because it sounded more interesting.

Hat-tip to mippy, whose journal alerted me to the existence of both Brown and his website.

Comments

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

Is that Christine Hamilton's knee he's sitting on...?

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, Heartbreak I

That one, you stick on the cover of a hair-metal album.

[new-brunette.livejournal.com]

Isn't the technique in the first one called "copying a photograph"? Looking at the second one on that page - the Parisian scene - the light seems to flare round the side of the tree trunk. Yanno, the way it does into a camera lens but doesn't into a human eye?

I can't paint for shit. I can take a half-decent photo, though, and I bet I could copy it with oils onto canvas.

He's just dreadful, though. When talking about why there'd been a split in the boys' team between the toffs and the not-toffs, he described his camp as "educated".

To be honest, they can only have allowed him on to the programme for comedy value as I can't believe he's got anything close to the self-awareness necessary for him to have done better.

Bye-bye, Nicholas.

[lifesizemonkey.livejournal.com]

What i'd give for his "vivacity and boldness"! Maybe it's just that photo but he looks like a man who took great delight in torturing animals as a boy.

[robsoft.livejournal.com]

That face.


Right there.


THAT.


That's a face that I'd like to punch, and I have to admit that I don't know why. It just looks like the sort of face that very probably deserves a punch. It's probably gone through a privileged and pampered life with very little real hardship, and never been punched.

Which can be rectified, natch.


As for the art - well, it's all subjective innit but jimyojimbo was right on the money with his metal album cover remark - anything on a minor label from the 80s would be about right for that one, as an inner sleeve perhaps.

It all looks a bit 'first year art college' to me, not that I'm an expert.

[vivalabridgetta.livejournal.com]

Mai eyez.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

His landscapes all have the same weird light quality. I can't think of any way to describe it, other than that it reminds me of the way Charn is described in "The Magician's Nephew", as dimly lit by a dying sun. There's something depressing about them. I think your Bateman observation is accurate.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

You managed more than the eight minutes or so I did, at which point my eyes wanted to tunnel out of my skull. He;s the equivalent of Vogon poetry.

Why has he painted Polly Toynbee as the Blessed Virgin?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I don't think the pictures on that sitre are nearly as bad as the text, especially that bio, by an eminently googlable schoolmate of the artist.

[lebeautemps.livejournal.com]

Ho ho ho.
So, no style of his own? He even robbed his granny for her name and his Hitler tache has slipped. He probably copies Kavanagh QC or Judge Deed in court too. Does he have a little dog named Coop?

I know someone else like him from Kings Law school who turned out to be a complete silver-tongued fraud. But I'd like a Lincoln's Inn prize. If that's true, that is.

Worrawankah anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

It swiftly becomes clear that on no account must this man ever be allowed near the human face.

Well, human faces except his own, which (as one might expect for a complete and utter ego maniac) he does seem to be pretty good at capturing.

But very cross that he should have appropriated the persona of THE WORLD'S SEXIEST SAINT for his latest portrait. He is very definitely not worthy.

[(Anonymous)]

btw, if NdLB is bad, wait til you get a load of Raef

[uitlander]

I couldn't quite believe what spewed out of his mouth in the boardroom. For someone who claimed to be superior to just about everything on the face of this planet, he really didn't seem to have done his homework on the subject of Mr Sugar and his views on academic credentials.

And as for that Madonna and child, as someone else has already commented, it looks like Christine Hamilton. More disturbingly, he looks like he wants bitty.

[therealjo.livejournal.com]

This kind of unconscionable cock-knocker is exactly why I don't watch the apprentice or other reality tv.... what a twunt.

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

I could SWEAR I've met him. (Not impossible, since I know and hang out with many solicitors and barristers. Ooh, look at me etc. But he is very young.)

I'd like a reality show to surprise me just once by getting 12 or 16 decent, normal people in to do the tasks or whatever. I think it would still be entertaining, because you'd watch what they did and actively pull for them to succeed, and their results would be based on their competence, not their twuntliness.