John Currin At Sadie Coles again

Contemporary and Old Art Reviews

John Currin At Sadie Coles again

Postby jasperjoffe » Thu Aug 02, 2012 4:11 pm

London deserted, fled olympix. Seen this show before. Pervy old style painting in soft feathered focus. He has unleased a bit more texture in the cloth but otherwise samo. He does the boucher wellish, but is there really mileage in this style or is it just pastiche. The odd groups perhaps are stronger, you feel like he's sampled from many old paintings. I don't know, more leering pictures of naked women, what's the added value, just a kind of awkwardness of doing it now.

http://www.sadiecoles.com/artists-web-app/currin
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Re: John Currin At Sadie Coles again

Postby CAP » Sun Aug 05, 2012 12:18 am

Apparently he's been on the books at Coles for 15 years now. He emerged in NYC in the early 90s. So it's probably too much to expect any surprises at this stage. And yeah the goofy skewing of anatomy/proportion/foreshortening is looking a little tired, a little too cute. We all know John's in love with the old master bit. The joke is it's made a slave of him. And the pin-ups and porn tease only underline an essentially vulgar, self-indulgent personality. I can't get offended by it, but I can't respect the artist either.

There was a time when these things were meant to be a provocation, subversive, but they're way past their use-by date for that. I half-expected him to be with Gagosian by now, but I guess Sadie is still pulling the numbers for him.

His stuff is still the best flag for Amerikan decadence, a measure of its cultural decline into a sort of Rococo funk. He might be today's Boucher, or perhaps Fragonard - it's worth looking at old Frago's fortunes after the fall of The Bastille.... :roll:
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