. I’ve been interested in that for a while and I haven’t been successful at it. They pulled me out with, like, pliers.CURRIN: Rachel has that, too. “It’s a rape, you mean?” he asks. I DECIDED I WOULD NEVER GO BACK to FASHION until I HAD SOMETHING NEW to SAY, until I COULD HAVE FUN CREATING FASHION AGAIN.
Wyndham Lewis shouldn’t have said those things about Hitler. And so was his masterful technique a breath of fresh and unconventional beauty in … He nods and says: “It is a violation. . It proved a good way to set himself apart.His first major solo show (at Andrea Rosen Gallery, which he left in the early aughts for Gagosian) featured caustic paintings of postmenopausal matrons. And especially interesting subject matter—that’s the worst.
I first heard of the painter John Currin last fall when I read about him in the New York Times.
“And so maybe I lost touch with that.” He stares at me, really The latest fashion news, beauty coverage, celebrity style, fashion week updates, culture reviews, and videos on Vogue.com.The best new culture, style, and beauty stories from Vogue, delivered to you daily.© John Currin. I was probably 3 years old, but she was like a cartoon character. And not a wry comment on the evil corporation, not the usual kind of leftist, standoffish take on things. (J. Currin quoted in A. Cook, "Interview with John Currin," John Currin, exh. I’m too old now, but I can imagine that the person who can do the bullshittiest show now would be something. “You always find out what monsters these people are,” he finally offers. That’s a long way of answering.
Those are the questions George is asking himself.FORD: To high heels? I mean, that’s the modus operandi of Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen and—CURRIN: Kippenberger, I think, was able to make bad drawing really well. If it brings me down, I just really can’t get into it. Because I make that detachment, I’m capable of objectifying a beautiful woman, but that doesn’t demean her in any way. “I think I initially refined things in order to make it more surprising when they aren’t refined,” he admits. I don’t know how you feel about that. I think that would be good, if you were young.O’BRIEN: That’s like trying to cash a really big check, though.CURRIN: This would be a good moment for somebody to hype the most laughable check of a show that they could possibly get away with. When I’m making an image of a woman, or dressing a woman—I have a reputation for sex and making a woman sexy, and men as well—but I don’t start out saying, “Oh, I’m gonna make this woman look sexy or sexual.” I simply stand there and put her in front of me and say, “What can I do to make her more beautiful in my eyes?
But I didn’t start doing nudes until I was in art school, andO’BRIEN: Rachel said that you did abstract painting for a while.CURRIN: It wasn’t really until after I got out of art school that I realized that I’d been doing that sort of for the audience, for that context. It wasn’t unfashionable in any kind of daring way.
That’s a great segue right into fashion.CURRIN: Actually, yeah, because you are saying that people associate homosexuality with sex—or oversexed men and sexual relationships. In Currin’s world art history and soft porn share a bed with varying degrees of comfort.
I’m very shy. The new show features the usual array of women in various stages of undress, the best of which might have stepped out of a Dutch master painting or perhaps one from a Greenpoint thrift store, at once recognizable but out of time. It’s amazing. But I’m very comfortable with sexuality. The show includes achingly lovely portraits of his sons, Francis and Hollis, as little boys, the only paintings I’ve ever seen of Currin’s that lack any discernible sardonic edge. Part of the fantasy of the ad campaigns—which I think Americans look at as a leisurely European playboy—is the evocation of a person not really hampered by guilt or remorse or worried about the unhealthy aspects of their lifestyle.FORD: This may sound corny, but the only thing I feel remorse about is when I hurt someone, hurt their feelings, or make them feel bad. . Nobody knows whether these banks are even banks anymore.
When Warhol was doing portraits, it was really unfashionable to do a portrait.O’BRIEN: Especially a commissioned portrait. In interviews both Feinstein and Currin have commented on sexism in the art world. Every timeO’BRIEN: Well, who’s good at it? “I think I was,” he says. I feel very American in certain ways, and in lots of ways I feel more European.CURRIN: How do Europeans feel about you? I need to do a few more push-ups, blah blah blah.” But that’s completely separate from me as a human being. .
I read this book .
Maybe on a narrative level it seems harsh . But I lust after beautiful women in the way that I lust after a beautiful piece of sculpture—this will probably get me in trouble—or a beautiful car. “Your kids’ reaction is that double mirror. It’s purely the body that I move through the world in, and people react to it on the surface. Currin has never been concerned with fashions or political correctness. The museums and academia had made painting CURRIN: Right, they were busy turning art into something like modern music. . I hope so—that would be great for me.O’BRIEN: I just felt like I saw more things that had this sort of primitive wow factor, like, “Wow, that must have taken a lot of people a long time.”CURRIN: Yeah, like prison art, where it’s like, “Wow, you made that all out of toothpicks,” or something like that.O’BRIEN: Yeah, it’s kind of like trickery .
Photo: Rob McKeever. Eat more pasta.CURRIN: So instead of last man standing, it’ll be last man smiling.