John Currin (born 1962) is an American painter based in New York City. He is most recognized for his satirical figurative paintings that explore controversial sexual and societal topics. His work shows a wide range of influences, including the Renaissance, popular culture magazines, and contemporary fashion models. He often distorts or exaggerates the erotic forms of the female body, and has stressed that his characters are reflections of himself rather than inspired by real people.
Early life Currin was born in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in Connecticut, the son of a physics professor and a piano teacher from Oklahoma. In Connecticut as a teenager he studied painting privately with Ukrainian artist Lev Meshberg. He went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he obtained a BFA in 1984, and received a MFA from Yale University in 1986.
Career At White Columns in New York City in 1989 he exhibited a series of portraits of young girls derived from the photographs in a high school yearbook. He used magazines like Cosmopolitan along with old issues of Playboy for inspiration for his paintings. In 1992 Currin moved to the Andrea Rosen Gallery, focusing on middle-aged women. By the late 1990s Currin's ability to paint subjects of kitsch with technical facility met with critical and financial success, and by 2003 his paintings were selling "for prices in the high six figures" after he moved to the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, New York. More recently, he has undertaken a series of figure paintings dealing with pornographic themes, saying: "One motive of mine is to see if I could make this clearly debased and unbeautiful thing become beautiful in a painting".
He has had retrospective exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and is represented in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Tate.
In 1994 Currin met artist Rachel Feinstein at a gallery in which she was living in a self-made gingerbread house as a performance piece. They were engaged two weeks later at Currin's show in Paris, and married three years later on Valentine's Day. They have two sons and a daughter. She has been described as his muse, which he says is "kinda corny". However, he also stated: "[W]hen I met Rachel I felt that I could connect with some principles that moved my art along, that I had some freedom from the petty things in my own personality." Feinstein has appeared in many of Currin's paintings, both as a face and as a body model. In 2002 Feinstein and Currin published a 24-page book of their works at the Hydra Workshop in Hydra, Greece, which they titled The Honeymooners: John Currin and Rachel Feinstein. It includes an interview conducted by Sadie Coles HQ. In 2011 The New York Times described them as "the ruling power couple in today’s art world".
In a 2011 interview, Currin described his relationship to his work as "a completely ambisexual atmosphere. I think you're right if there's a reverse logic to my work [i]t's that the pictures of men are about men and the pictures of women are about me." He has been influenced by 16th-century Northern European paintings, Old Master portraits, pin-ups, nymphs, and ethereal feminine prototypes. His paintings hold both the grotesque and the beautiful, and range in inspiration from classical artists such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard to more contemporary artists like Norman Rockwell and Robert Crumb. Art historians and curators have also connected Currin's provocative style and use of kitsch to the post-war Bad Painting movement, citing French artist Bernard Buffet alongside figures like Francis Picabia and Martin Kippenberger.
Art market The artist's most expensive works sold at auction:
$12,007,500 – Nice 'n Easy, 1999. Christie's, November 15, 2016. $4,645,000 – Miss Fenwick, 1996. Sotheby's, May 14, 2014. $3,615,000 – Tolbrook, 2006. Sotheby's, May 16, 2019. $3,525,000 – The Collaborator, 2010. Christie's, May 11, 2015. $3,525,000 – Amanda, 2003. Phillips, November 11, 2013.
Source materials Currin has cited Danish pornography "pulled [...] off the Internet" as source material for his work. Specific images published by Color Climax Corporation have been identified as sources for Currin's more pornographic paintings, including compositions and small details.
Exhibitions Solo exhibits
1989: White Columns, New York City 1992: Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City 1993: Critical Distance, curated by Luk Lambrecht, Ado Gallery, Antwerp 1993: Monika Sprüth Galerie, Cologne 1994: Galerie Jennifer Flay, San Francisco 1994: Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City 1995: Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 1995: Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City 1995: Fonds régional d'art contemporain, Limoges 1995: Donald Young Gallery, Seattle 1995: Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco 1996: Regen Projects, Los Angeles 1997: Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City 1997: Sadie Coles HQ, London 1999: Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City 1999: Regen Projects, Los Angeles 2000: Sprüth Magers, Cologne 2000: Sadie Coles HQ, London 2001: Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City 2002: Regen Projects, Los Angeles 2003: Sadie Coles HQ, London 2003: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Serpentine Galleries, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City 2003: John Currin: Works on Paper, Des Moines Art Center; Aspen Art Museum; Milwaukee Art Museum 2006: Gagosian Gallery, New York City 2008: John Currin: New Paintings, Sadie Coles HQ, London 2009: John Currin: Works on Paper: A Fifteen Year Survey of Women, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City 2010: John Currin: New Paintings, Gagosian Gallery, New York City 2011: DHC/ART, Montreal 2012: Sadie Coles HQ, London 2013: Gagosian Gallery, Paris 2019: John Currin: My Life as a Man, Dallas Contemporary 2021: Memorial, Gagosian Gallery, New York City 2022: New Paintings, Sadie Cole HQ, London
Selected group exhibits
2023: GAMES, GAMBLERS & CARTOMANCERS, The New Cardsharps, Art & Newport, Newport RI, USA; Capturing the Moment, Tate Modern, London, England 2022: Pictus Porrectus: Reconsidering the Full-Length Portrait, Isaac Bell House, Newport RI, USA; REPEATER, Sadie Coles HQ, Kingly Street, London, England 2021: Hong Kong Exchange, Pedder Building, Hong Kong; and I will wear you in my heart of heart, Flag Art Foundation, New York NY, USA 2020: On Everyones Lips, From Pieter Bruegel to Cindy Sherman, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany; Painting is Painting's Favorite Food, South Etna Montauk, Montauk, New York NY, USA, curated by Alison Gingeras; American Pastoral, Gagosian, Britannia Street, London, England 2019: Reason Gives No Answers: Selected Works from the Collection, Gagosian, Paris, France; An Exhibition for Notre-Dame, Gagosian, Paris, France; Flora + Fauna, Sadie Coles HQ, Davies Street, London, England 2018: Cliche, Almine Rech Gallery, New York NY, USA; Nude: Art from the Tate’s Collection, Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan; NUDE: Masterpieces from the Tate, Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea 2017: Body Laid Bare: Masterpieces from the Tate, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmak, Auckland, New Zealand; Lucas Cranach the Elder: 500 Years of the Power of Temptation, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan 2016: Lucas Cranach the Elder: 500 Years of the Power of Temptation, NMWA The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan; Desire, Moore Building, Miami FL, USA; Nude: From Modigliani to Currin, Gagosian, Madison Avenue, New York NY, USA 2015: America Is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY, USA; The Shell (Landscapes, Portraits & Shapes); A show by Éric Troncy, Almine Rech Gallery, Paris, France; Dans un Intérieur. Meubles, œuvres murales & textiles d'artistes. Almine Rech Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; As Is Is, Altman Siegel, San Francisco CA, USA; La Peregrina, A Contemporary Response To Rubens and His Legacy, RA Royal Academy of Arts, London, England, curated by Jenny Saville; Sleepless – The bed in history and contemporary art, 21er Haus, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria, curated by Mario Codognato 2014: She: Picturing Women at the Turn of the 21st Century, David Winton Bell Gallery and the Cohen Gallery, Brown University, Providence RI, USA; FIERCE CREATIVITY, Pace Gallery, New York NY, USA; Urs Fischer curated show, Sadie Coles HQ, South Audley Street, London, England; Somos Libres II: Works from the Mario Testino Collection, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin, Italy, curated by Neville Wakefield 2013: NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum, New York, NY 2012: Freedom Not Genius, Works from Damien Hirst's Collection, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin, Italy Curators’ Series #5. Bouvard and Pécuchet's, Compendious Quest for Beauty, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, England Absentee Landlord, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN 2011: Celebrating the Golden Age, Grans Hals Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands The Deer, Le Consortium Dijon, Dijon, France 2010: Lebenslust und Totentanz, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems, Austria Kupferstichkabinett: Between Thought and Action, White Cube, London, England Crash: Homage to JG Ballard, Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London, England In the Company of Alice, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, England Connecticut, D’Amelio Terras, New York, NY 2009: Mary Magdelene, The Metropolitan Opera, New York, NY Slow Paintings, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany Tears of Eros, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain Oscar Tuazon. That's Not Made For That, David Roberts Foundation, London, England Paint Made Flesh, Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY Travels to: Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. 2008: Diana And Actaeon - The Forbidden Gaze, Stiftung Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany Travels to: Compton Verney, Warwickshire, England Bad Painting. Good Art, mumok - Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, Austria Pretty Ugly, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York, NY THE OLYMP – Works on Paper, Burkhard Eikelmann Com, Düsseldorf, Germany 2007: Old School, Hauser & Wirth Colnaghi, London, England Travels to: Zwirner & Wirth, New York, NY Very Abstract and Hyper Figurative. Thomas Dane Gallery, London, England Insight?, Gagosian Gallery, Moscow, Russia What is Painting? – Contemporary Art from the Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY News on Paper, Galerie Burkhard Eikelmann, Düsseldorf, Germany Timer 01, Triennale Bovisa, Milan, Italy Painting Now! – Back to Figuration, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Jake & Dinos Champan and John Currin, Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden 2006: In the Darkest Hour There May Be Light, Works from Damien Hirst's Murderme Collection, Serpentine Gallery, London, England Surprise, Surprise, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England Zurück zur Figur: Marlerei der Gegenwart, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, Germany Travels to: Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; KunstHaus Wien, Vienna, Austria Painting Codes: I Codici della Pittura, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone, Monafalcone, Italy The Power of Women, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea di Trento, Trento, Italy Sweets and Beauties, Fredericks and Freiser, New York, NY New York, New York, Grimaldi Forum, Monaco