John Currin’s paintings balance a love of oil painting, in all of its stodgy, self-ѕeгіoᴜѕ tradition, with contradictory humor and crassness.
John Currin stands as a luminary among contemporary American painters, hailed for his mastery of traditional oil painting techniques that evoke the timeless beauty of European art from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. With an unwavering commitment to tradition, Currin seamlessly blends refined craftsmanship with audaciously crude subject matter, challenging the boundaries of conventional artistic sensibilities. In this intriguing fusion, his art emerges as a harmonious interplay of humor, provocation, and genuine artistic expression.
Amidst the canvas of John Currin’s “Park City Grill” from 2000, housed within the hallowed halls of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, viewers are confronted with a dualistic dance of attraction and repulsion. Currin deftly navigates the intersection of American popular culture’s frivolities and crassness with the profound weight of high art. His technique and aesthetic echo the echoes of the late European Renaissance, weaving a tapestry of visual allure that beckons the observer closer.
While Currin’s artistic finesse pays homage to the old masters of European art, he is an undisputedly American painter. The late Renaissance aesthetic within his work is a deliberately commodified rendition, infused with the flamboyance of American culture. Currin’s joy lies in his astute, incisive recognition of distinctly American depravity. He seems to cast a satirical gaze upon himself, his audience, and the larger cultural milieu that has given rise to this spectacle. The intensity of his images invokes a visceral conflict, caught between attraction and discomfort. His paintings exude opulence, decadence, and hedonism, yet simultaneously evoke feelings of insecurity, anxiety, and repentance, as Currin’s art maintains a provocatively self-aware stance.
“The Embarrassment of Painting” thus becomes a captivating exploration of contradictions, an artistic journey where the canvas reflects not just the visage of its subjects but also the intricacies of a nation’s identity and psyche.
“Hot Pants” by John Currin, a 2010 masterpiece housed within the esteemed walls of The Broad Museum in Los Angeles, is a vivid exploration of embarrassment threaded through multiple layers. The complex emotion is not only woven into the depictions of Currin’s figures, characterized by outlandish proportions and caricature-like faces, but also into the narratives of desire he skillfully unveils, narratives often punctuated by comic overindulgence.
Currin’s unabashed embrace of embarrassment takes its boldest form in his paintings inspired by pornography. The lack of inhibition within the imagery, despite its crassness, is meticulously rendered, showcasing an admirable balance of focus and restraint. Take, for instance, the frenetic, erotic choreography depicted in “Rotterdam,” a piece that mirrors the tone and conventions of commercial filmed pornography. The deliberate recreation of such a scene within the realm of painting, aspiring to the levels of craftsmanship and beauty synonymous with the Renaissance, immediately strikes the viewer. The resulting impact of these clashing instincts is both beautiful and perverse, inducing in the audience the same tantalizing blend of embarrassed pleasure that Currin himself seems to relish in the act of creating such a painting.
“Stamford after Brunch” by John Currin, a captivating piece from 2000 housed in the Art Institute of Chicago, masterfully weaves a narrative that equates consumptive, carnal pleasures with the artist’s unapologetic embrace of a style often dismissed as kitsch in the contemporary art world.
In Currin’s realm, where depictions of sex, eating, and drinking abound, a trio of women in “Stamford after Brunch” revel in their indulgence of cigars and martinis. Their joy mirrors Currin’s surrender to the richness of oil paint, meticulously glazed and luminous, radiating with an authenticity he cannot resist. A defining strength of the work lies in Currin’s unflinching sincerity, a bold departure from conventional contemporary artistic taste. Far from a mere embrace of kitsch, his artistic choices are a deliberate acknowledgment of the consequences, executed with a rare lack of irony.
During his academic journey, Currin initially aligned with the more acceptable and ostensibly progressive approach of abstraction. Yet, over time, he has boldly claimed the mantle of the old-master-ish style of figure painting, fully embracing its kitsch associations while bearing the badge of a contemporary American painter. His awareness of the artistic landscape doesn’t deter him; instead, he fearlessly engages with the aesthetics of embarrassment through his conservative painting technique. Currin consistently grapples with the crass and often shameful nature of desire in the present moment, infusing his work with a distinctive, unapologetic humor that underscores the complexities of being an American painter.
“Newspaper Couple” by John Currin, a 2016 masterpiece showcased at Sadie Coles in London, finds its unique charm in the interplay of self-consciousness and humor that permeates Currin’s artistic approach. While Currin undoubtedly invests genuine care into his meticulous painting style, it is his skillful infusion of humor into both narrative and stylistic choices that prevents the romanticism of his technique from veering into dreariness or sentimentality.
In the whimsical tableau of “Newspaper Couple,” the absurdity of the scene serves as a potent antidote, ensuring that Currin’s technique remains engaging rather than affected or cloying. Moreover, humor acts as a grounding force for what could otherwise become a tiresome cultural commentary. Currin’s paintings, with their cleverly provocative tone, manage to convey messages without adopting a contemptuous or overly serious demeanor. Reflecting on the levity of his work, Currin himself notes, “I realized I could be different from everyone else just by being cheerful in my work. In art school, I wanted to be intense, like Francis Bacon, but I’m not—I’m better when I’m jokey and cheerful” (John Currin, 2008). This infusion of humor into fine art, especially when coupled with Currin’s studious and immaculate technique, not only defies convention but also reveals a profound appreciation for traditional oil painting presented with a refreshing and unexpected twist.
“The Penitent” by John Currin, a 2004 masterpiece awaiting its fate at Sotheby’s, unveils Currin’s ingenious fusion of jokiness with the Mannerist style, a technique pioneered in the 16th century by luminaries such as Tintoretto, Pontormo, and El Greco. While Mannerism traditionally celebrated exaggerated figures, Currin elevates this aesthetic to new heights, transcending the idealized elegance of its predecessors and venturing into a realm bordering on the cartoonish, occasionally breaching that very threshold.
What sets Currin’s stylization apart is his deliberate infusion of an affected perspective, one already distorted by the contours of American consumerist culture. His vision becomes a double distortion, a conscious play on the aesthetic trends of 16th-century European art. Currin not only reinterprets but amplifies and exaggerates these influences, transforming them to accommodate his own cultural peculiarities as an American painter. In “The Penitent,” this remarkable synthesis of humor, Mannerist stylization, and cultural commentary coalesce into a visually arresting narrative, inviting viewers to reconsider the boundaries between tradition and innovation in the ever-evolving tapestry of artistic expression.
In the nuanced world of John Currin’s artistry, exemplified by “Nude in a Convex Mirror” from 2015 showcased at the Gagosian Gallery, the distortion of his subjects unfolds with striking clarity. The female figures, prominently featured, bear the hallmark traits of Currin’s stylization — exaggerated breasts, elongated necks, heads of disproportionate dimensions, and limbs that taper with deliberate exaggeration. Yet, beyond these overt effects, subtler nuances emerge.
In “The Penitent,” for instance, the sitter’s countenance undergoes a subtle stretching and flattening, a deliberate manipulation that accentuates the painting’s flatness and plays with the conventions of painted space. The result is a composition that invites contemplation of both the visual and conceptual layers within the artwork. Similarly, “Nude in a Convex Mirror,” both in title and image, serves as a testament to Currin’s mastery in overt distortion and reflection, encapsulating the essence of his distinctive figurative style.
In contemplating John Currin’s work, it becomes apparent that his art is not just a portrayal of subjects but a deliberate exercise in affectation and imagecraft. The deliberate choices made in the depiction of form and space serve as a testament to his mastery in manipulating visual elements to elicit a nuanced response from the observer, making each painting a rich tapestry of distorted reality and calculated artistry.
“Thanksgiving” by John Currin, a 2003 gem housed within the Tate Museum in London, unfolds as a tapestry woven from a multitude of sources, each stroke a composite of numerous references drawn from advertisements, commercial photography, pornography, and live models. The resulting effect is a deliberately synthetic reality that transcends the specificity of individual representation. Currin’s figures don’t merely mirror distinct persons; rather, they emerge as animated amalgamations, characters, scenes, and facets of Currin himself — vibrant collages of cultural ephemera he deftly navigates.
In the realm of Currin’s artistry, even the exception, his wife Rachel Feinstein, appears transformed. Her face, recognizable in a multitude of paintings, is not portrayed as a mere reflection of herself. Instead, Currin consciously acknowledges her interpreted version as a separate entity, distorted and filtered through various media, images, and ideas.
Beyond the overt stylistic tendencies, Currin’s compositions deliberately venture into the unreal and awkward. Scenes are overly posed, relying on the peculiar wonkiness of painted space to make the compositional trickery function seamlessly. “Thanksgiving” exemplifies this with all three figures modeled after Currin’s wife, introducing a subtle sense of unreality that resonates throughout the canvas. The plated raw turkey, set against the backdrop of a Thanksgiving dinner rendered in the late Renaissance style, underscores Currin’s identity as an American painter, deliberately invoking the European tradition of oil painting while simultaneously displacing himself from it.
Within Currin’s artistic domain, he isn’t just a recorder of scenes; he is the shaper, the inventor, an active participant in the distortion and construction of introspective narratives. The images become consciously distorted reflections, where narrative and image intertwine, creating a blend that feels both bittersweet and stilted, akin to a joke the artist can’t quite keep to himself.