Cecily Brown’s paintings, with their erotic subjects, gestural brushwork, and the physicality of their palette, speak to the senses. The title of Brown’s third edition for TEXTE ZUR KUNST, “The 5 Senses,” appears to spell out this emphasis on sensual effects. The motif, built up out of thick brushstrokes involving plenty of white paint, was inspired by the series “The Five Senses” (1617–18), a collaboration between Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens. Those five oil paintings show an ­allegorical female figure, executed by Rubens, in splendid settings painted in rich detail by Brueghel, modeled on the court of the Spanish Netherlands. Whereas the original depicts the five senses individually, Brown visually fuses them while still hinting at the various attributes in her source: a stringed instrument can be made out near the bottom edge of the picture; a fountain (surrounded, in the original, by “fragrant” flowers), a dish with oysters and a lobster appears at the center; and what could be the globe from the allegory of sight can be spotted further to the left.Many reviews of Brown’s major retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2023 underscored the significance of the act of seeing. “The 5 Senses,” ­however, visibly demonstrates a simultaneity of the senses within the framework of ­painting. Insisting on this simultaneity also makes sense in how Brown’s work brings into focus both the corporeality of painting and the bodily act of ­painting. And the assertion that painting activates all five senses ultimately also implies a humorous ­reclamation of the medium’s omnipotence.