John Currin  

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"Take one look at John Currin's paintings and you could assume he likes stupid women with big tits. Pouting, wide-eyed ingénues look vacantly out of his canvases while ladies in mini-skirts measure each other's immense breasts. There is nothing politically correct here. And yet, on closer inspection, his representation of women isn't so clear-cut." --Francesca Gavin 05 September 03 via [1]


"Currin puts art history in play. Reviewing the Whitney show in the Times, Michael Kimmelman made apposite references to Mantegna, Pontormo, Hans Baldung, van Eyck, Dürer, Annibale Carracci, Houdon, Goya, Otto Dix, Christian Schad, Francis Picabia, Norman Rockwell, Balthus, Lucian Freud, Paul Cadmus, van Meegeren (the forger of Vermeers), Gerhard Richter, and Jeff Koons. And the eminent art historian Robert Rosenblum, writing for the show’s catalogue, found opportunity, without undue strain, to drop more than fifty names, including those of Piero di Cosimo, Botticelli, El Greco, Courbet, Renoir, Roy Lichtenstein, George Petty (the girlie illustrator), Frank Frazetta (the science-fiction illustrator), and Todd Haynes (the filmmaker)." --The New Yorker[2]


"This contrast prevails in two nearly identical versions of the same embrace. “Kissers,” which shows the lovers from the chest up, is acceptable museum fare. “Malmo” extends the image a bit lower to include what centuries of painters have not."[3], both images are based on this photo.


"In his depictions of the female nude, John Currin mines a number of distinct pictorial styles from art history; his figures have exhibited the frilly ruffles and peachy skin tones of French Rococo paintings, as well as the distended anatomies and distorted proportions of Northern Renaissance and early Mannerist works. The faces, makeup, and hairstyles of Currin’s women, however, are always borrowed from contemporary magazines and advertisements. Ultimately, the artist’s fusion of high and low source materials produces distinctly beautiful, often disturbing, works that are equal parts homage and parody. This painting is a direct quotation of Annibale Carracci’s Dead Christ (c. 1584; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart)." --On Nude on a Table (2001)



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John Currin (born 1962) is an American painter working in the figurative art tradition, known for such paintings as Rotterdam and The Bra Shop.

Currin was born in Boulder, Colorado.

His work shows a wide range of influences, including sources as diverse as Northern Renaissance, contemporary popular culture, fashion models and pornographic photos. Many of his paintings show female nudes; he often distorts or exaggerates the natural form of the human body. His paintings can be seen in many locations, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian Institution. He has exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery.




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