.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
At once technically virtuosic and thematically shocking, John Currin’s paintings walk the line between reverence and rebellion. Heralded as a provocateur of the art world, Currin built his reputation by thumbing his nose at postmodern orthodoxy, resurrecting figurative painting at a moment when it was widely dismissed as conservative or regressive. Currin channels art historical heavy weights while lacing his canvases with visual cues borrowed from erotic imagery, suburban kitsch, and the legacy of Pop. The result is a space where Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s coy nudes can collide with Hustler centerfolds, and where the sacred and the salacious are rendered with equal painterly devotion. An icon of 1990s figurative painting, Jaunty & Mame exemplifies this collision: a sexually charged mise-en-scène reimagined through the syntax of Rococo painting, executed with the lush technique of the Renaissance, the coarseness of French Realism, and the visual vocabulary of American sleaze.
Currin propelled the early stages of his career by intentionally stirring controversy within the art establishment, or by “making the right people angry” as he once attested (J. Currin quoted in K. V. Weg and R. Dergan, eds., John Currin, New York, 2006, p. 33). When Currin made his debut in the 1980s, painting—especially figurative painting—was widely dismissed within the dominant postmodern discourse. For Currin, his chosen media more so than his content was essential in staking his reputation as “bad boy” of the art world. Born out of the marginalized status of his chosen craft, Currin’s cast of disempowered and objectified characters echoed the unease he was made to feel as a champion figurative painter.
Throughout the 1980s, Currin experimented with various formal devices that would distance his work from the perceived inauthenticity that had come to define the genre. Fascinated by the likes of François Boucher and Fragonard—who seemingly invented their own cast of seductive characters—Currin set out to develop a similarly distinctive visual language. “Rococo [painters] would have the same face on every figure and the same kind of body,” Currin observed. “I thought it would be funny if I made my own sort of tribe of figures. In this case, they would have these enormous breasts” (J. Currin interview with J. Cuno, “The Un-Private Collection: John Currin and James Cuno,” Los Angeles, 2014). This irreverent breakthrough came in 1987 with a crude ink drawing now known as Big Breasted Woman, in which he exaggerated the female form to a grotesque extreme. By rendering the woman’s breasts in an overtly sexist and anatomically impossible way, Currin found a means to subvert the neutrality of figuration.
These woman became a dominant motif in Currin’s work throughout the late 1990s, appearing in charcoal, ink, pencil, gouache, watercolor, and oil. In 1997, the theme reached its apex when a small series of paintings shown at Andrea Rosen Gallery. According to the New York Times art critic, Roberta Smith, The Bra Shop and Jaunty & Mame were—“like it or not”—the standouts of the show. “In contrast to the blaring anatomical distortions, the emotional exchanges here are subtle and chaste, like some kind of updated religious picture. It can’t be by chance that the gestures of these women evoke the poses of the Virgin in Renaissance paintings,” she wrote of the paintings (R. Smith, “Art in Review,” The New York Times, 7 November 1997, p. E37).
Borrowed from the pages of Hustler, Currin was drawn to the quasi-narrative setup of two women in a lingerie shop. “It seemed to me a latter-day version of these funny genre subjects that you see in [works by] Fragonard,” he explained, framing the pornographic scene as a modern echo of Rococo painting (J. Currin interview with J. Cuno, op. cit.). Like Rococo scenes that revel in flirtation and artifice, Jaunty & Mame invites the viewer into a space of voyeuristic performance—where commerce and intimacy are tightly entangled.
Formally, Jaunty & Mame operates through a friction of surfaces and styles. The elongated bodies reflect the spatial distortions of Mannerist painters like Pontormo, while the thick, sculptural impasto used on the faces recalls the heavy-handed realism of Gustave Courbet. “The palette knife reminds me of the way it feels when you ruin something with love,” Currin reflected. “You can’t improve it; you can’t smooth it out—it only gets worse the more you touch it. The more love you show, the more you destroy it” (J. Currin quoted in, K. V. Weg, op. cit., p. 92). That push-pull between polish and rupture—between reverence and sabotage—sits at the heart of Currin’s practice.
In reworking amatory material with Old-Master technique, Jaunty & Mame doesn’t sanitize the source; it sharpens its stakes. The result is a painting that operates on multiple registers—seductive, absurd, technically virtuosic, and emotionally complex. As Roberta Smith concluded in 1997 review, “The effect of these paintings is of a mindless, insulting cliché transformed into an image that is riddled with different kinds of consciousness: both the women’s and the artist’s, not to mention the viewer’s. The mind is constantly kept off balance and on edge, at once infuriated and touched” (R. Smith, op. cit., p. E37).
Currin propelled the early stages of his career by intentionally stirring controversy within the art establishment, or by “making the right people angry” as he once attested (J. Currin quoted in K. V. Weg and R. Dergan, eds., John Currin, New York, 2006, p. 33). When Currin made his debut in the 1980s, painting—especially figurative painting—was widely dismissed within the dominant postmodern discourse. For Currin, his chosen media more so than his content was essential in staking his reputation as “bad boy” of the art world. Born out of the marginalized status of his chosen craft, Currin’s cast of disempowered and objectified characters echoed the unease he was made to feel as a champion figurative painter.
Throughout the 1980s, Currin experimented with various formal devices that would distance his work from the perceived inauthenticity that had come to define the genre. Fascinated by the likes of François Boucher and Fragonard—who seemingly invented their own cast of seductive characters—Currin set out to develop a similarly distinctive visual language. “Rococo [painters] would have the same face on every figure and the same kind of body,” Currin observed. “I thought it would be funny if I made my own sort of tribe of figures. In this case, they would have these enormous breasts” (J. Currin interview with J. Cuno, “The Un-Private Collection: John Currin and James Cuno,” Los Angeles, 2014). This irreverent breakthrough came in 1987 with a crude ink drawing now known as Big Breasted Woman, in which he exaggerated the female form to a grotesque extreme. By rendering the woman’s breasts in an overtly sexist and anatomically impossible way, Currin found a means to subvert the neutrality of figuration.
These woman became a dominant motif in Currin’s work throughout the late 1990s, appearing in charcoal, ink, pencil, gouache, watercolor, and oil. In 1997, the theme reached its apex when a small series of paintings shown at Andrea Rosen Gallery. According to the New York Times art critic, Roberta Smith, The Bra Shop and Jaunty & Mame were—“like it or not”—the standouts of the show. “In contrast to the blaring anatomical distortions, the emotional exchanges here are subtle and chaste, like some kind of updated religious picture. It can’t be by chance that the gestures of these women evoke the poses of the Virgin in Renaissance paintings,” she wrote of the paintings (R. Smith, “Art in Review,” The New York Times, 7 November 1997, p. E37).
Borrowed from the pages of Hustler, Currin was drawn to the quasi-narrative setup of two women in a lingerie shop. “It seemed to me a latter-day version of these funny genre subjects that you see in [works by] Fragonard,” he explained, framing the pornographic scene as a modern echo of Rococo painting (J. Currin interview with J. Cuno, op. cit.). Like Rococo scenes that revel in flirtation and artifice, Jaunty & Mame invites the viewer into a space of voyeuristic performance—where commerce and intimacy are tightly entangled.
Formally, Jaunty & Mame operates through a friction of surfaces and styles. The elongated bodies reflect the spatial distortions of Mannerist painters like Pontormo, while the thick, sculptural impasto used on the faces recalls the heavy-handed realism of Gustave Courbet. “The palette knife reminds me of the way it feels when you ruin something with love,” Currin reflected. “You can’t improve it; you can’t smooth it out—it only gets worse the more you touch it. The more love you show, the more you destroy it” (J. Currin quoted in, K. V. Weg, op. cit., p. 92). That push-pull between polish and rupture—between reverence and sabotage—sits at the heart of Currin’s practice.
In reworking amatory material with Old-Master technique, Jaunty & Mame doesn’t sanitize the source; it sharpens its stakes. The result is a painting that operates on multiple registers—seductive, absurd, technically virtuosic, and emotionally complex. As Roberta Smith concluded in 1997 review, “The effect of these paintings is of a mindless, insulting cliché transformed into an image that is riddled with different kinds of consciousness: both the women’s and the artist’s, not to mention the viewer’s. The mind is constantly kept off balance and on edge, at once infuriated and touched” (R. Smith, op. cit., p. E37).