John Currin's paintings are the art worlds equivalent of the strip club in Flash Dance. Sexually charged, possibly debauched, visually seductive but pretty harmless. This new collection of paintings can be found at Sadie Coles and is a striking in both style and content.
Firstly, I have to admit to being a John Currin fan and had been eagerly anticipating the exhibition. I had arranged to meet a friend/ fellow painting graduate (also a Currin fan) and we were both pretty excited about seeing the show. Rupert and I ran up the escalators at Bond Street with enthusiasm usually contributed to the promise of free wine, threw our a-z to the wind in and promptly got lost amidst the splendor of Mayfair. Some time later we eventually found ourselves squeezing into the packed new Sadie Coles gallery. The smartly dressed crowd was intermixed with familiar faces from the Glasgow School of Art and familiar faces of a different kind…but more of that later.
The exhibition of new works by Americas leading figurative painter is a departure from his usual soft core, eye candy imagery to an ultimately explicit exploration of eroticism. Where as past works hinted at sex or were lightly sexual in tone, this new collection leaves no question, yip , she’s being doubled teamed.
The erotic embraces leave nothing to the imagination however the sex depicted is not hard, challenging or threatening as is often found in contemporary art but highly attractive and seductive, like a French porn film from the 70s. The characters were round and fleshy, with strange wispy fair hair that reminded me of Otto Dix’s “Madchen auf Fell” lush and intensely labored, as if every hair had been individually painted. Amidst the cocks and vulvas were some amazing details, intricately painted gold necklaces, hyper-realistic soft furnishings and luxurious interiors all draped in a soft, honeyed light.
A reworking of Ophelia with a curious Currin-character as the reclining nude, delicately intertwining a long string of pearls in her unearthly pale hands revealed Currin's skill as a painter. The pearls were handled such precision that I had to look closely to be sure that they had not been stuck on!
The basement floor offered a slightly more sedate but equally wonderful collection of etchings. His signature style of contemporary caricatured directly referenced famous classical paintings, but with currin-esque females implanted to play the leading roles. Christ as a strange doe-eyed blonde was witty and striking. A smallish canvas of roses in reds, pinks and soft sky blues, similar to something you might find in a middle-class suburban home contradicted the paintings on the first floor but neatly tied in with the exhibition as a whole. The brushy, fleshy painting of roses led smoothly on to the large-scale paintings of intimate sex scenes, the soft pinks and peaches used in the petals and the clitorises. This humorous link added to the overall atmosphere of domesticity versus sexual splendor.
Attending the opening alongside the artists and suited gallery-goers was a splattering of famous faces. Having only recently left glasgow where celebrity is non-existent, this was almost as exciting as seeing the new collection. Okay, well honestly, a lot more exciting! I froze, realising that I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the king of British foppishness and stuttering twittishnes, Hugh Grant. Alongside Hugh, were the pet shop boys, Lucien Freud and the aging high priest of rock and roll, Mr Mick Jagger. Inspired by the free beer I had consumed I was about to ask their opinions on the paintings for the blog…. So Hugh, what is your opinion of this vulva? Luckily, Rupert suggested this was not the best idea, I guess thats what friends are for!
