05w24:1 John Currin Posted June 14th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 24 number 1 (john currin) All these articles are from late 2003 – Timothy ——————————————————————— Defending John Currin | Charlie Finch http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/finch/finch11-10-03.asp “Currin is conservative in the best sense of the world: he seeks to perceive what is authentic within the purview of his bent vision, and what is authentic to Currin is the unclassifiability of desire and the conviction that all life is essentially erotic. Other than Currin’s stated template, Lucius Cranach the Elder, the piece that best approximates Currin’s enduring genius is Vermeer’s Girl in the Red Hat, in which the attenuated red fur of the hat begs to be taken sexually, with permission from its wearer’s smile. This sensuous aspect of Currin’s work drives the politically correct art elite nuts, much as his limpid palette, so reminiscent of Wayne Thiebaud, leads to accusations that John can’t paint.” Talk of the Town | Mia Fineman http://slate.msn.com/id/2093020 “There are some wildly different ideas about exactly what Currin is up to?New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman sees him as ‘a latter-day Jeff Koons’ trafficking in postmodern irony while Peter Schjeldahl at The New Yorker finds him a blissfully sincere artist tapping into the timeless values of ‘mystery, sublimity, transcendence.’ But everyone is unanimous about one thing: John Currin can paint.In almost every review, Currin’s technical skill is acknowledged with a kind of breathless wonder. And to be sure, lately he has adopted a suave, Old Master-ish style, rendering the smooth, luminous skin of his nudes with real conviction?a marked departure from the intentionally crude technique of his earlier paintings. But this critical fixation on Currin’s painterly technique raises the question: Why are we so surprised that a successful contemporary painter is good at putting pigment on canvas? “essay continues with an html slide show Art Market Guide 2003 | Richard Polsky http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/polsky/polsky10-22-03.asp “Now that Currin’s prices are in the same league as the above artists, you have to ask yourself — who is this painter and what is he doing selling for all this dough? In terms of esthetics, John Currin has surprisingly received universal praise from the art world press. There has been all sorts of talk of how expertly his works are painted, coupled with a lot of psychological nonsense about the human condition. To my eye, all we have here are intentional kitschy, thrift-store portraits of people with exaggeratedly wide eyes. Sure, they’re skillfully painted, but why shouldn’t they be? In this day and age, the art world considers being a good draughtsman and having a command of color and composition to be something remarkable.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 14 June 2005 @ 2:25 PM
