All artworks copyright John Currin, courtesy of Gagosian
More than 20 years ago, at a time when art critics were proclaiming the death of painting, John Currin’s technically astounding, exaggeratedly realistic figurative oil paintings rattled the cage of the contemporary art world. Coming out of the blue, this young painter brought to mind the way Francis Picabia pivoted from Cubism and Surrealism to painting pinups, which garishly transgressed any resemblance to the academic nude. He not only changed minds about painting, but also unabashedly brought it back.
John Currin paints women — sexy, confident, often saucy, slightly distorted women, who displayed themselves without flirting for approval. Robert Crumb meets Jacopo Pontormo. They are as voluptuous as a Fragonard, as detailed as a Hans Memling, and as airy and in-your-face as a photo-portrait by Thomas Ruff. Currin paints the kind of hyper-effusive breasts seen only on a radical porn site, but whose possessors display them the way a hot-rodder might show off his customized car.
You can’t say his work is feminist, yet he honors his subjects with the delicate care of a master painter gifted with the kind of chops people hadn’t seen from any contemporary artist.
Currin portrays the irony of situation comedy, while never positioning himself above his subjects — who aren’t so much surreal as elegantly, humorously mannered characters from our own wacky world.
— Jeff Rian
Lydian, 2013, oil on canvas
Nude in a Convex Mirror, 2015, oil on canvas photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio
The Women of Franklin Street, 2009, oil on canvas
Maenads, 2015, oil on canvas photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio
Reclining Nude in a Convex Mirror, 2015, oil on canvas photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio
Fortune Teller, 2015, oil on canvas, photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio
The Leg, 2016, oil on canvas photo by Rob McKeever
The Storm, 2013, oil on canvas photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio
Lynette & Janette, 2013, oil on canvas photo by Zarko Vijatovic
Saltwater Nymph, 2012, oil on canvas photo by Rob McKeever
Boot and Candle, 2016, oil on canvas
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by Karley Sciortino
by Daniel Pinchbeck
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