One reason the British-born artist Cecily Brown, 53, came to New York in 1994 was that she wanted to paint, and in the London of Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst, with their fried-egg-and-kebab sculptures and sharks in formaldehyde, that urge was regarded as rather retrograde. But the other reason was, as she says, “I’m a nepo baby in London, and here people don’t know so much that my dad was a big cheese.”One reason the British-born artist Cecily Brown, 53, came to New York in 1994 was that she wanted to paint, and in the London of Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst, with their fried-egg-and-kebab sculptures and sharks in formaldehyde, that urge was regarded as rather retrograde. Sylvester had always been interested in Brown’s painting, introducing her to famous artists like Jasper Johns and Richard Serra and taking her to see a show with Francis Bacon, whose work he’d championed for decades, curating exhibitions and publishing a book of their interviews. In art school, Brown recalls, “Bacon was the reigning king, and [Sylvester’s] interviews with Bacon were pretty famous among art students.” But in New York, she says, Sylvester’s “name doesn’t necessarily ring a bell, which I think was one of the main reasons I wanted to live here…. The art world here just felt so much bigger.”

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