John Currin (born 1962) is an American painter. Year 1962 ( MCMLXII) was a Common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Painting (pān'tīng in Art, is the practice of applying Color to a Surface (support base such as e He is best known for satirical figurative paintings which deal with provocative sexual and social themes in a technically skillful manner. [1] His work shows a wide range of influences, including sources as diverse as the Renaissance, popular culture magazines, and contemporary fashion models. The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth" Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere [2] He often distorts or exaggerates the erotic forms of the female body.
Currin was born in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in Connecticut, where he studied painting privately with a renowned traditionally trained artist from Odessa, Ukraine, Lev Meshberg. Boulder is a Home Rule Municipality that is the County seat and most populous city of Boulder County, Colorado, in the United States Connecticut ( is a state located in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. ODESSA which stands for the German phrase O rganisation d er e hemaligen SS - A ngehörigen which in turn translates Ukraine (Україна Ukrayina, /ukrɑˈjinɑ/ is a country in Eastern Europe. [3] He went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he obtained a BFA in 1984, and received a MFA from Yale University in 1986. Carnegie Mellon University (also known as CMU) is a private Research University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United In the USA the Bachelor of Fine Arts, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard Undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the In the United States, a Master of Fine Arts ( MFA) is a Graduate degree typically requiring two to three years of study beyond the Bachelor's degree
In New York City in 1989 he exhibited a series of portraits of young girls derived from the photographs in a high school yearbook, and initiated his efforts to distill art from traditionally clichéd subjects. The City of New York In the 1990s, when political themed art works were favored, Currin brazenly used bold depictions of busty young women, mustachioed men and asexual divorcés, setting him apart from the rest. He used magazines like Cosmopolitan along with old issues of Playboy for inspiration for his paintings. Playboy is an American Men's magazine, founded in Chicago Illinois, by Hugh Hefner and his associates which has grown into Playboy When criticized for being sexist, Currin did not deny it, but did remark that he felt that "at that time [he] didn't feel like a man and [he] didn't feel like a woman. " [4] In 1992 a subsequent exhibition focused, less sympathetically, on well-to-do middle-aged women. [5] Nonetheless, by the late 1990s Currin's ability to paint subjects of kitsch with technical facility met with critical and financial success, and by 2003 his paintings were selling "for prices in the high six figures". Kitsch /kɪtʃ/ is a term of German or Yiddish origin that has been used to categorize art that is considered an inferior tasteless copy of an existing [6] More recently, he has undertaken a series of figure paintings dealing with unabashedly pornographic themes. Pornography or porn is the explicit depiction of Sexual subject matter with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer [7]
He has had retrospective exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago[8] and is represented in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden[9] and the Tate Gallery. The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney" harbors one of the most important collections of 20th century American art The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an Art museum located in Washington D Tate is the United Kingdom 's national museum of British and Modern Art and is a network of four art galleries in England: Tate Britain (opened in [10]
Currin is based in New York City, where he lives with his wife and fellow artist, Rachel Feinstein.
References
- ^ Kimmelman, Michael, With Barbed Wit Aforethought, The New York Times
- ^ Walker Art Center
- ^ Tomkins, Calvin, Lifting the Veil: Old Masters, pornography, and the work of John Currin, The New Yorker, January 28, 2008, page 61.
- ^ Magdalene Perez (2006), Being John Currin: The Artist Reveals All at the New School, ARTINFO, <http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/13723/being-john-currin-the-artist-reveals-all-at-the-new-school/>. Retrieved on 22 April 2008
- ^ Tomkins, p. 62.
- ^ Tomkins, p. 63.
- ^ "One motive of mine is to see if I could make this clearly debased and unbeautiful thing become beautiful in a painting. " Tomkins, p. 58.
- ^ see Kimmelman review
- ^ Hirshhorn Museum
- ^ Tate
External links
- John Currin, Sadie Coles HQ, frieze.com
- Gagosian Gallery: John Currin
- Sadie Coles HQ: John Currin
- Comment on BBC
- Currin's Nudes Essay on Currin's paintings of nudes
- John Currin: Boomerang Essay and interview with Currin
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