JOHN
CURRIN
WITH ESSAYS BY
Norman Bryson, Alison M. Gingeras, and Dave Eggers
EDITED BY
Kara Vander Weg with Rose Dergen
PANDISCIO
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CONTENTS
10
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
11
GUIDE TO THE ENTRIES
14
NORMAN BRYSON
Maudit: John Currin and Morphology
32
ALISON M. GINGERAS
John Currin: Pictor Vulgaris
46
PLATES
DAVE EGGERS
49
Tracy and Her Loyalty
69
True Stor y—1986—Midwest—USA—Tuesday
109
The Weird Wife
139
The Definition of Reg
161
333
This Time with the Horses
Stephanie Can’t Do Thirteen
On Making Someone a Good Man by Calling Him a Good Man
How Long It Took
Go-Getters
The Boy They Didn’t Take Pictures Of
The Commercials of Nor way
360
EXHIBITIONS
366
BIBLIOGRAPHY
379
PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS
380
INDEX OF WORKS BY JOHN CURRIN
185
215
221
245
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NORMAN BRYSON
Maudit: John Currin and Morphology
I am Duchess of Malfi still.
—John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, Act IV, Scene 2
When I first saw John Currin’s The Cripple (1997, fig. 1), what I sensed was not only the cruelty
that lay within the construction of the image, but a nasty stickiness in that cruelty, a way it had
of making you connive in its own malevolence. Since Currin’s image of a girl with a walking cane
owes so little of its morphology to what a disability or locomotor disorder is actually like in the
world, the figure’s misshapen and twisted body evidently originates with the painter, whose
attitude toward the deformation he inflicts seems to include enjoyment. Painting—unlike
caricature—is a slow process: the carefully worked surface witnesses to the passage of many days
spent living with the image; its image’s deliberation and smoothness of facture indicate an
underlying satisfaction with its final form. The enjoyment has an obviously pornographic edge,
too, since the girl’s disfigurations—tiny rib cage, oversized breasts, swan neck, abundant hair,
open lipsticked mouth—are signs not of disability but of compliance with the demands of a
sexualized male gaze, marks of the figure’s availability for consumption. Perhaps the most difficult
area to view is the expression of delight on the cripple’s smiling face, as though being deformed
by the painter’s imagination—deformed to the point of disfigurement and disability—is the
cause of her own evident happiness. Her having to use a cane is part of the fun, the joy of this
woman who gladly gives herself over to abuse and embraces abuse as her destiny and fulfillment.
My main difficulty in viewing the image lay in its ability to recruit me into its own offensive
perspective. In the reading of the figure’s physiognomy there seemed to be something
involuntary or automatic at work, something beyond one’s powers of revision or resistance. It
gave me no interpretative latitude. The figure’s distorted rendition was not something I could
qualify or negotiate: I was compelled to see it as grotesque. Which meant that no matter how
malicious I felt this work to be, there was no choice but to inhabit its own dark impulses. As
the painting enlisted me into its misanthropic and misogynistic world, it began to make me
feel that I, not the painter, or not only the painter, was the source of its ill will, that somewhere
I had it in me to mock as grotesque the very features that carnal appetite required, to chuckle
outright at the badge or emblem of the figure’s misfortune, her cane.
Portrait of Chewy (2001, p. 287) seemed to harass and conscript me in much the same way. Perhaps
5
Opposite:
Fig. 1
John Currin
The Cripple, 1997 (detail)
Oil on canvas
44 x 36 in. (111.8 x 91.4 cm)
Hort Family Collection
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ALISON M. GINGERAS
John Currin: Pictor Vulgaris
“Making the right people angry”: the key to understanding the impulses that drive John Currin’s
oeuvre lies in this antagonistic posture.1 Renowned almost as much for such brazen proclamations
as for the provocative content of many of his canvases, Currin propelled the initial stages of his
career by strategically raising the ire of the art establishment—a.k.a. “the right people.” His
name became synonymous with aggressively heterosexual male bravado and reactionary politics
that found their visual expression in misogynistic depictions of female subjects, including
menopausal women, feeble bedridden maidens, and girls with colossal breasts.
Until now, the standard reception of this work has focused primarily on its sensationalist,
politically incorrect subject matter. Yet Currin founded his provocateur persona on more than
just his licentious iconography. Unlike other machismo painters of the recent past, Currin
staked his “bad boy” status first and foremost on his choice of medium: painting as such was
not met with the same kind of abhorrence in the heyday of Julian Schnabel, Eric Fischl, and
David Salle as it was in 1990, when Currin was a young upstart. In reexamining Currin’s
evolution as an artist, it is perhaps essential to underscore that form and content are inseparable
in his oeuvre. The artist’s decision to become a figurative painter was a knowing act of hostility
toward the kind of socially engaged, post-studio art that was the orthodoxy of American art
schools and galleries at the time. Currin explains:
At the time [when I began my training], the feeling was that figurative painting was the equivalent
of lying. It was exploitative. The idea of a freestanding subject that sprays out meaning from a central
source was under attack. The whole “French Theory” attack on authorship was the accepted truth.
. . . My whole life, I thought, “I want to be an author,” and when I got to school, I learned that this
was a bad thing. It was like being a Nazi or a Fascist. These fictional portraits I first made were
like a first attempt to be really explicit. I was trying to react against these accepted truths in the
academy as well as a type of layered, “postmodern” painting.2
Over the past few years, the critical prestige that has been lavished on numerous painters of
Currin’s generation has eclipsed the context of disfavor that surrounded figurative painting
when Currin made his debut. Without this original context in mind, it is easy to define Currin’s
oeuvre exclusively through his choice of subject matter—but in fact the debased
representations of women for which Currin is now celebrated were born out of the marginalized
Opposite:
Fig. 14
John Currin
Jaunty & Mame, 1997 (detail)
Oil on canvas
48 x 36 in. (121.9 x 91.4 cm)
Sammlung Sander
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GINGER CROWLEY, 1990
BUCKLE, 1990
POTTER, 1990
FLAG, 1990
Oil on canvas
34 x 30 in. (86.4 x 76.2 cm)
Private Collection
Oil on canvas
34 x 30 in. (86.4 x 76.2 cm)
Private Collection
Oil on canvas
34 x 30 in. (86.4 x 76.2 cm)
Collection of Ranbir Singh
Oil on canvas
34 x 30 in. (86.4 x 76.2 cm)
Private Collection
EXHIBITIONS
PROVENANCE
PROVENANCE
PROVENANCE
John Currin: Les Coopérateurs, Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain du Limousin,
Limoges, France, July 6–Sept. 30, 1995; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London,
Dec. 7, 1995–Feb. 18, 1996, p. 16, illustrated in color
Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Innuendo, Dee/Glasoe, New York, June 3–July 22, 2000
EXHIBITIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I’m Not Here: Constructing Identity at the Turn of the Century, The Susquehanna Art
Museum, Harrisburg, PA, Dec. 2, 1999–Feb. 24, 2000, no. 6, illustrated in color
Dodie Kazanjian, “The Young Master,” Vogue (New York), Nov. 2000, p. 481,
illustrated in color
Fast Forward: 20 Years of White Columns (New York: White Columns, 2003), p. 22,
illustrated in color
Private Collection
Fast Forward: 20 Years of White Rooms, White Columns, New York,
Nov. 1–Dec. 7, 2003
EXHIBITIONS
John Currin: Les Coopérateurs, Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain du Limousin,
Limoges, France, July 6–Sept. 30, 1995; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London,
Dec. 7, 1995–Feb. 18, 1996
As Time Goes By, Leo Koenig, New York, Dec. 1, 2003–Jan. 3, 2004
Andrew J. Ong, New York
Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Philippe Segalot, Paris
Christie’s, New York, Sale of Contemporary Art, Nov. 14, 2002
EXHIBITIONS
(Not So) Simple Pleasures, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, Dec. 8,
1990–Feb. 3, 1991, p. 13, illustrated
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Update 1989–1990 (New York: White Columns, 1990), illustrated
Helena Papadopoulos, “John Currin,” Arti (Athens), Nov.–Dec. 1994, p. 123,
illustrated in color
Keith Seward, “John Currin: The Weirdest of the Weird,” Flash Art, Nov.–Dec.
1995, p. 78, illustrated in color
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Stephanie Can’t Do Thirteen
Stephanie is in her own bedroom, among her things, and in her bedroom is James,
whom she knows through friends and who has perfect forearms. Tonight they found
themselves the last two at a party for a friend, who is leaving the country to go to Bolivia
to raise llamas, or perhaps coffee. They are now in her bedroom, Stephanie and James,
because they like each other a great deal, especially tonight, when his forearms looked
truly exceptional. But James is only in Stephanie’s city for one more week, at which
time he will leave for Oregon to live as a forest-fire watchman of some kind. The point
is that together they have no future, but Stephanie badly wants to have sexual
intercourse with James. But if she does, James will bring her total number of sexual
partners up to thirteen, which is, she thinks, too many. Not too many for herself—for
she regrets only two of the men in question, both named Robert, both with too much
back fat—but too many for whomever she finally marries. She can already hear the
conversation, a year or five years hence, with the man of her future, whoever he may
be—he too will have amazing forearms—when after much fumbling and guessing
and suspecting, they finally agree to exchange information about past partners:
numbers, names, frequency, locales. And she knows now that thirteen will seem
excessive. She believes that even twelve, where she is now, seems too much, will
likely scare off a man who is not very secure in himself. But thirteen is something else,
with other, more sinister, complications. Thirteen is a baker’s dozen, and it is this
phrase, “baker’s dozen,” that is the problem. She knows that she will marry a welladjusted and self-secure man with a sense of humor, and a man with a sense of humor
will hear the number thirteen and will, she can be certain, make a joke involving the
phrase “baker’s dozen.” And though they both will laugh when the fiancé utters the
phrase, and laugh some more as he conjures the image of actual bakers, in their white
outfits and hats and powdered hands, lining up for a crack at Stephanie—ha ha ho
ho!—both Stephanie and her beloved will be privately sickened by the image and
the phrase at its root, and it will thus be the beginning of a quick unraveling of their
love and respect for each other. They will not recover from the thought of her and
these many baking men, of her being covered in flour, or pushed around in dough, or
the inevitable, it would seem, incorporation of a rolling pin. All of this leaves her no
choice, for the sake of her future: she must sleep not only with James, but with
whomever becomes handy next weekend. That will, she realizes in a moment of
lustful revelation, give her fourteen, not thirteen, and for fourteen there are no
expressions involving bakers, none involving tradesmen of any kind.
The Bra Shop, 1997 (detail)
Oil on canvas
48 x 38 in. (121.9 x 96.5 cm)
Private Collection
—Dave Eggers
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THANKSGIVING, 2003
Oil on canvas
68 x 52 in. (172.7 x 132.1 cm)
Tate, Lent by the American Fund for the Tate Gallery, courtesy of Marc Jacobs 2004
PROVENANCE
Sadie Coles HQ, London
EXHIBITIONS
John Currin, Sadie Coles HQ, London, Sept. 6–Oct. 4, 2003
John Currin, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Nov. 20, 2003–Feb. 22, 2004
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jessica Berens, “We Are Not a Muse,” The Observer Magazine (London), Aug. 31, 2003, p. 17, illustrated in color
“John Currin: Sadie Coles,” The Art Newspaper, Sept. 2003, p. 13, illustrated (detail)
Eliza Williams, “London: Serpentine, John Currin; London: Sadie Coles HQ, John Currin,” Contemporary (London),
Sept. 2003, p. 68, illustrated in color
Deborah Solomon, “Mr. Bodacious,” The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 16, 2003, p. 45, illustrated in color
Kim Levin, “Agent Provocateur,” The Village Voice, Nov. 26, 2003, p. 95, illustrated (detail)
Blake Gopnik, “Plan to Become an American Art Star? Oh, Be a Realist,” The Washington Post, Dec. 14, 2003, p. N6,
illustrated
Clip-art image from Currin’s archives
Peter Schjeldahl, “Irresistible: John Currin at the Whitney,” The New Yorker, Dec. 15, 2003, pp. 105–06
Peter Plagens, “Brilliance or Bust,” Newsweek, Dec. 22, 2003, p. 50, illustrated in color
Jonathan Harris, ed., Art, Money, Parties: New Institutions in the Political Economy of Contemporary Art (Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 2004), p. 79, illustrated in color
Sam Hunter, ed., Modern Art (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004), 3rd ed., p. 437, illustrated in color
Nicolette Ramirez, “John Currin: Whitney Museum of American Art,” The New York Art World, Feb. 2004, p. 11
Uta Grosenick, ed., Art Now: Vol. 2 (Cologne: Taschen, 2005), no. 2, p. 106, illustrated in color
Sandy Nairne and Sandy Howgate, The Portrait Now (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2005), p. 31, illustrated
in color
Pierre Doze, “La Toile Triomphe,” Citizen K (Paris), Summer 2005, p. 150, illustrated in color
Giancarlo Politi, “John Currin: An Interview by the Readers of Flash Art,” Flash Art, July–Sept. 2005, p. 98,
illustrated in color
Andrea Brusciati and Alessandra Galasso, eds., Painting Codes (Monfalcone, Italy: Galleria Comunale d’Arte
Contemporanea Monfalcone, 2006), p. 45, illustrated in color
Charlotte Mullins, Painting People: Figure Painting Today (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006), p. 169, illustrated
in color
COMMENTARY
Currin’s wife, Rachel Feinstein, during her
pregnancy, 2003.
This was an idea that I had started before September 11, but it just didn’t work—it was a failed painting that sat around in my studio.
I decided to retry the idea, and that was when Rachel got pregnant. The funny thing is that the painting took me exactly nine months
to finish, and the painting turned into an allegory of Rachel’s pregnancy. Certain kinds of paintings were on my mind at the time—
Dutch genre paintings, Velázquez’s bodegones—but as soon as I began, it became more about Rachel, and she posed for the figures
a lot. When my painting goes well, it’s like rolling a ball down a hill: you try hard in the beginning, but then it takes on its own life and
you let it go where it wants to go. Some things become allegorical, and other things are just about what you see. I had been told that my
paintings were anachronistic, and so I wanted to do what I’d been accused of doing. That’s why I included the old-fashioned mirror
and the Corinthian columns.
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The Hag, 2001
Charcoal on paper
22 3/4 x 17 3/8 in. (57.8 x 44.1 cm)
Private Collection
Rachel as “The Hag”, 2003
Charcoal and white chalk on
prepared paper
22 x 16 in. (55.9 x 40.6 cm)
Private Collection
Thanksgiving Study, 2003
Charcoal and conté crayon on paper
20 x 15 in. (50.8 x 38.1 cm)
Collection of Dean Valentine and
Amy Adelson, Los Angeles
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