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9/9/2003

John Currin

Serpentine Gallery, London

American painter John Currin has been celebrated as one of the most important and provocative artists of his generation. Among a number of contemporary painters who have focused exclusively on the figure, he produces works of art that are as compelling as they are unsettling. This survey of Currin's work, his first solo exhibition in a public gallery in the United Kingdom since 1995, traces the development of his career from his early paintings of women and couples, to his idealised nudes inspired by old master paintings, to his scenarios of suburban or domestic life. Most recently, departing from his usual practice of working in series, Currin has painted idiosyncratic versions of portraits, genre scenes, still lifes and nudes.

Currin began his career in the early 1990s, at a time when painting, which was considered to be traditional and was a less prominent artistic medium than video, photography and installation work, which were seen as more progressive and challenging. Currin was deliberately reactionary, not only in terms of making figurative paintings, but also against prescribed notions of political correctness that dictated what was considered artistically, socially, and politically acceptable. He set out to provoke viewers by taking stereotypical male fantasies to grotesque extremes, distorting the physical characteristics of his subjects, who in some cases appear to be crippled, burdened, or awkward. These figures, which include his paintings of women with breasts enlarged to unnatural sizes, are both comical and tragic, and test the boundaries of what was considered to be appropriate subject matter in art at the end of the twentieth century.

In Currin's later paintings, the increasingly works from life. In 2001 he used a live model for the first time in Nude on a Table. Likewise, in 2002, he painted his first actual portrait Rachel with Fur, of his wife, the sculptor Rachel Feinstein. It has been argued that many of his images of women resemble Feinstein,however until very recently she has functioned as his inspiration rather than as a traditional model.
While many of Currin's images may seem familiar, the majority of his paintings do not represent actual people but rather are syntheses of different visual references. He is well versed in the history of art and his sources of inspiration range from the paintings of Italian and Northern Renaissance masters, to the romantic settings of the eighteenth-century French Rococo artists such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), and the genre scenes of the nineteenth-century Realist Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). However, he is also unabashedly drawn to contemporary sources and popular culture, including vintage pin-ups, fashion magazines and pornography.

John Currin is co-organised by the Serpentine Gallery, London and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Supported by Donna and Howard Stone, Edwin C. Cohen and The Blessing Way Foundation, Andrea and James Gordon, and David Teiger. Additional support from Richard A. Lenon and Dianne Wallace.

Admission free


Image:
John Currin
Park City Grill 2000
Oil on canvas
96.7 x 76.2 cm
Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Justin Smith Purchase Fund, 2000.
Courtesy Andrea Rosen
Gallery New York and
Sadie Coles HQ, London.
Photograph by Andy Keate.
© 2003 John Currin




Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens W2 3XA London
tel 020 72981515

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