John Currin: New Paintings

Book excerpt: A catalogue of new work by American artist John Currin, one of the world’s foremost figurative painters. John Currin’s work draws upon a broad range of cultural influences that include Renaissance oil paintings, 1950s women’s magazine advertisements, and contemporary politics. Labeled as mannerist, caricaturist, radical conservative, or satirist, Currin continues to confound expectations and evade categorization. While his virtuosic technique is indebted to the history of classical painting, the images engage startlingly contemporary ideas about the representation of the human figure. Currin paints challengingly perverse images of female subjects, from lusty doe-eyed nymphs to more ethereal feminine prototypes. With his uncanny ability to locate the point at which the beautiful and the grotesque are in perfect balance, he produces subversive portraits of idiosyncratic women in conventional settings. This much-anticipated volume comes four years after the definitive John Currin, and it features an interview with the artist by Angus Cook and six short-fiction essays by Wells Tower.