John Currin

At the South Audley Street Sadie Coles gallery I experienced up close and personal the supposed pornographic paintings of John Currin's latest work.
I thought they were beautiful. Flash painted in a Renaissance style, looking like fine bone china. His study of the women was quite beautiful even though a little risque in maybe one or two. I thought it was less pornographic and something much more loving. Only one made me feel something uncomfortable. I felt as if I was watching something sordid happening. I can't find any images of it online.
Basically there was a scantily dressed young woman whose face seemed frozen, smiling but either he could not bring her to life or her look is of terror. I tend to think the latter. A woman sits with her back to us but seemingly holding the woman who is central and looking out at us, directly. There are two men, dressed and to me they look as if the are leering over her and something sexual is going to take place. The scene is full. A sumptuous, flock-type wall paper, a velvet stool with gold braid fringe. The whole thing is so very tactile including the skin of the naked woman with her back to us. I wanted to touch the painting. Yet I also felt as if I shouldn't be there and didn't want the next thing that I imagined to happen. of course that next thing is stuck there in time and in my imagination. Scary.

Oh here it is (well nearly all of it)


Here's Sadie Coles' information sheet ....

In his latest show at Sadie Coles HQ, John Currin presents a new series of paintings centred on the female nude. These latest works combine the explicitness of his pornographic paintings of the last five years with a new level of psychological realism. In contrast to those works, which drew upon 1970s magazines, the majority were painted directly from life in the artist's studio. They show reclining women who appear ambiguously caught between the art-historical trope of female nude and appearance of earthy naturalism.
Paradigms of womanhood (milky skin, alluring smiles) run up against incongruous details such as underarm hair and overabundant flesh. Otiose strings of pearls and expanses of lustrous fabric offset the ephemeral bodies of the fashion of memento mori. AT the same time, there is a knowing parallel between the awkward artifice of the women's postures and nakedness, and the phony luxury of their accoutrement's and surroundings.
Reflecting these shifts between the generic and individualised, Currin has punctuated the anonymous series with a small portrait of his wife (which was gorgeous - there were two of them. She is so attractive, in fact delicately beautiful and is an artist herself, Rachel Feinstein - my words not Sadie Coles). But as with other models, her expression conveys an air of ethereal inscrutability. The women's smiles are frequently as enigmatic as the timeless "archaic smiles" of  Greek statuary, while elsewhere their expressions are slipping into barely-concealed grimaces - as if directed back at the notional prurience and voyeurism of the viewer.
An element of caricature recurs in many works, linking them with the faintly grotesque personae of Currin's earlier output. In a large scale picture - a tableau, in contrast to the single portraits which dominate the exhibition - a nude woman sits flanked by suited, leering men and a half naked female companion. Through this compressed narrative, which suggests a modern-day reworking of the chauvinistic scene in Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe (1863), the artist throws light on the sordid underbelly of contemporary American society.


Currin has spoken of pornography in art as a "cliche of transgression". The traumatisation of the 'rude' pornography into the 'polite' idiom of old-masterly painting is furthermore a foil for an underlying element of subversion in his work - their strange dualism of 'bad' drawing and virtuoso painting. His figures' elongated limbs and awkward postures introduce a note of expressionism - echoing the more overt distortions of Otto Dix or George Grosz. (hmm? I'm struggling to see the connection with Dix and Grosz - Less than tenuous for me). In one painting, a figure is curled almost into the posture of a praying mantis on top of a bed of green plush.
Currin's new body of work responds to the grand sweep of art history in a dual spirit of caricature and veneration, playing upon the conceits and absurdities of painting at the same time as affirming its vitality. Through his often explicit content, he unravels the elements of sexuality or tawdriness which lurk implicitly with many masterpieces of the Renaissance and after. A host of unresolved tensions - virtuosic painting and awry drawing; elegance and vulgarity; sincere and irony - are at work in Currin's latest work. Beneath their surface bravura, the canvasses re-examine some of the enduring and vital contradictions of western painting.

John Currin (born 1962) is an American painter. He is best known for satirical figurative paintings which deal with provocative sexual and social themes in a technically skillful manner. His work shows a wide range of influences, including sources as diverse as the Renaissance, popular culture magazines, and contemporary fashion models. He often distorts or exaggerates the erotic forms of the female body. (Wikipedia)

To be honest I'm not sure about the leaflet information. It seems very speculative and making tenuous links. I think it's a little pretentious. However, it is one persons view and the job of the curator to bring the art to life I think. I am sure the woman we spoke to said that they were all sold and had been sold from £1.5m upwards. Blimey!!
I cannot recall a praying mantis pose but then I am already losing the minds eye images experienced today. I was particularly taken with the woman with pearls. It was truly delightful. The nudity did not seem pornographic but perhaps I've become so accustomed to paintings of the woman;s form. But that was what it seemed to be. A fascinated study of woman's form. There was one that was suggestive. There is was at the foot of the woman, with legs apart and the hint of her lace stocking tops, and her hand resting lightly on her most womanly mount. It reminded me strongly of Egon Schiele. And indeed when I searched for images there was a link up with the very Schiele work I was thinking of. In fact there was one portrait, not nude, that reminded me in looks of the Schiele model.
probably one of my favourites






Learning something new ....Memento mori is a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember you must die" or "Remember you will die". It refers to a genre of artworks that vary widely but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their mortality, an artistic theme dating back to antiquity. (Wikipedia).

Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of Weimar society and the brutality of war. Along with George Grosz, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.



The New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) is a term used to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it. Rather than some goal of philosophical objectivity, it was meant to imply a turn towards practical engagement with the world—an all-business attitude, understood by Germans as intrinsically American: "The Neue Sachlichkeit is Americanism, cult of the objective, the hard fact, the predilection for functional work, professional conscientiousness, and usefulness."
The term was originally the title of an art exhibition staged by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, to showcase artists who were working in a post-expressionist spirit, but it took a life of its own, going beyond Hartlaub's intentions. As these artists rejected the self-involvement and romantic longings of the expressionists, Weimar intellectuals in general made a call to arms for public collaboration, engagement, and rejection of romantic idealism.
The movement essentially ended in 1933 with the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis to power.

George Grosz (July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic before he emigrated to the United States in 1933.



Title - Suicide



I would love to own and run a gallery. I wonder who I could learn from? I will ask T. I would also love to be involved in a Bauhaus type centre of creativity. A place for the most creative to live and breathe and adventure with artists wanting to explore their particular art. How innovative and exciting.

Oh and then I went off to the New Burlington Place Sadie Coles gallery. As I travelled on foot I passed by an exhibition of Calder. Now this is the work of a man that ignited the art in my soul. Visiting Juan les Pins, which as I write it I have pangs to live there even now, we visited Le Musee Picasso.
http://www.antibes-juanlespins.co.uk/le-musee-picasso/antibes/tabid/3491/offreid/cc136a95-5719-488b-aa57-89cd06dfcfc9/art-and-culture-details.aspx

Wow what an amazing experience and I wasn't truly conscious of it at the time. I so wish I could revisit with what I know now. I have been so very fortunate indeed in my life. I wish I had been more cultured and appreciated more fully what I was privileged to experience. Anyway within the Musee was an exhibition of Calder. Suddenly my heart and soul were uplifted and beholden by his work. I was also lucky enough to see his work in Washington DC. And there I was walking past some more of his work - where my whole art story truly began. I wanted to take a photo, looking in to the private party. A guard was o the door. I wish I could have taken that photo or have been brave enough to ask to enter. Maybe if I had told my story they would have allowed me in for a moment. Thinking back on what I surveyed, it was all women and children. Hmm interesting.

Anyway I the went to Sadie Coles - Secret Life - Jonathan Horowitz and Elizabeth Peyton.
I will scan the document and add it to this page. Not tonight though as I feel slightly jaded now.
I saw a very intriguing book there called My Secret Life by anonymous. A very sexually explicit boo of learning by a writer never known but guessed at. I was looking for copies through Amazon and eBay but they are very expensive indeed. Interesting how pornography or erotica is very much heightened mode right now - or rather comes to find me. I am curious to read Fifty Shades of Gray. I read a book in my teens called The House of Joy. I think that was actually the Nazi prioner of war camp. No there was another book about the sexual romp of a young woman leaving home and becoming involved with the sex industry. I was intrigued then and went on to expriment myself always with that book in mind.

FA as always was very enlightening. I was chatty with C, a person who I have thought to be frosty towards me. She was so much friendlier and approachable. I had lunch chatting. And then C joined me on the journey to Bond Street and the walk to Sadie Coles. Oh I went to see the Sarah Lucas part of the gallery too and have some photos to add later. Interesting. I saw her too.

A very interesting day. How exciting that I am branching out from main galleries and exhibitions. However a date is in the diary for the Munch exhibition. I think we will need to buy tickets in advance..... 11th August is the date set.

Bliss
XX

My photos from the day .............