John Currin

, popular culture magazines, and contemporary fashion models. [ [http://collections.walkerart.org/item/object/8921 Walker Art Center] ] 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. [Tomkins, Calvin, "Lifting the Veil: Old Masters, pornography, and the work of John Currin", The New Yorker, January 28, 2008, page 61.] He went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he obtained a BFA in 1984, and received a MFA from Yale University in 1986.

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. 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. 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." [citation | title= Being John Currin: The Artist Reveals All at the New School | author=Magdalene Perez | publisher=ARTINFO | year=2006 | url=http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/13723/being-john-currin-the-artist-reveals-all-at-the-new-school/ | accessdate=2008-04-22 ] In 1992 a subsequent exhibition focused, less sympathetically, on well-to-do middle-aged women. [Tomkins, p.62.] 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". [Tomkins, p.63.] More recently, he has undertaken a series of figure paintings dealing with unabashedly pornographic themes. ["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.]

He has had retrospective exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago [see Kimmelman review] and is represented in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden [ [http://hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/search.asp?Artist=Currin&has
] ] and the Tate Gallery. [ [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=2694 Tate] ]

Currin is based in New York City, where he lives with his wife and fellow artist, Rachel Feinstein.

References

External links

* [http://www.frieze.com/shows/review/john_currin/ John Currin, Sadie Coles HQ, frieze.com]
* [http://www.gagosian.com/artists/john-currin/ Gagosian Gallery: John Currin]
* [http://www.sadiecoles.com/index.php/site/category/john_currin/ Sadie Coles HQ: John Currin]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A1164971 Comment on BBC]
* [http://supervert.com/essays/art/john_currin/nudes/ Currin's Nudes] Essay on Currin's paintings of nudes
* [http://supervert.com/essays/art/john_currin/ John Currin: Boomerang] Essay and interview with Currin