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Lot Essay
'Quaintsville, U.S.A.' is the subject of much of John Currin's art. With a painterly style that marries the kitsch of Winslow Homer and Norman Rockwell with the strangeness of Francis Picabia, John Currin's seemingly banal paintings disturbingly present the full horror of healthy, white middle-class Americans going about their daily lives. Bordering on caricature without ever quite crossing into its domain, the sugar-coating of Currin's style and imagery is unnerving and suggestive of a dark and bleak vision of life that in fact never really materialises. A profound, disturbing and ultimately puzzling sense of vacancy and meaninglessness is what Currin's paintings convey, deliberately undermining the importance of their own carefully wrought imagery with a proud and overt banality.
Something of this element of Currin's art may be reflected in the clearly ironic title of this work. Depicting a favoured type, a bushy coiffured man, donning a folk-revivalist beard and wearing an Arran sweater that lends him the air of a fisherman or man of the sea, Currin has amusingly entitled this banal, inoffensive and disturbingly ordinary looking figure as 'the Colossus.'
Something of this element of Currin's art may be reflected in the clearly ironic title of this work. Depicting a favoured type, a bushy coiffured man, donning a folk-revivalist beard and wearing an Arran sweater that lends him the air of a fisherman or man of the sea, Currin has amusingly entitled this banal, inoffensive and disturbingly ordinary looking figure as 'the Colossus.'