John Currin

John Currin

A catalogue of new work by American artist John Currin, one of the worlds foremost figurative painters. John Currins work draws upon a broad range of cultural influences that include Renaissance oil paintings, 1950s womens 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