For those fascinated by chronology, it's a happy coincidence that John Currin was born in 1962. In that year, Roy Lichtenstein had his 1st one-man show at the Leo Castelli Gallery, and to the horor of all sensitive, art-loving people, set forth a new vision of what might be called "American Grotesque". He found his sources in the oceans of un-looked at visual trash that hurt eyes of refined spectators, and disclosed, among other shocks in our image world, how strange, to the point of being hideous, the American idea of female beauty could be.Culled from lowbudget ads & comic strips, these ripe young girls when enlarged and presented as oil paintings for close-up scruntiny, turned out to be monsters, belying their original purpose of seducing the vast unwashed american public into spending $$$ on holiday resorts, soap opera and kitchen appliances. The faces of this artificial race were discovered to have paralyzed masklike perfection; the limbs and torsos of their warped, steam-rolled bodies were entirely depleted of bone, joints, and muscle, so that their fluid contours could expand and contract at the artist's will. But of course the shock eventually wore off, and now these paintings look not like their commercial soources but like vintage, museum-worthy Lichtensteins, as much as the nudes of Boucher or Canova, Ingres or Renoir. And on a less exalted, american wavelength, moving closer in time to Currin's grass roots heritage, I might mention the pinups of George Petty and his successor Albreto Vargras, whose silk-smoothed, pneumatic fantansies of rounded and elongated female flesh established their own race of sex goddesses. From the 103os to the 1960s, these shared erotic dreams kept arosing heterosexual subscribers to Esquire or Playboyand surely helped to inspire the pinup nudes that, in the early 1960s, also became the satirical focus of many works by Lichtestien's pop contemporaties Tom Wesselmann and Mel Ramos. Today, of course these mid-century objectsof desire seem remotely artificial and unsexy as japanese erotica, havinglong ago become nostalgic documents of another era far less likely to prompt contemporary lust than to provide a field day for students of gender roles in american culture.
All of this may offer some preparation for looking at Currin's ever-expanding population of American humanoids, a completely original update of works by 1960s pioneers who were excited by the aesthetic potential lurking in the eeriness of contemporary america. One might begin, as Currin did, with the commonplace of portrait photographs, like those preserved in the highschool year books people remember from thier even more distant youths. From 1989 on, thos egalitarian format haunted him; and with a bias as predictable as Renoir's, he focused exclusively on the girls in the class
The faces and expressions look great in his pieces. The bottom of the right woman doesnt look right on following picture. All the knees look weired. Is this the new style?
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=317a8g9
helensavva 发表评论于
英格烈士滴看不懂^^
uh-oh 发表评论于
看起来,还是需要我出手了,现翻译一点,反映好的话,再继续。
您手里有什么,就尽管来吧,我怕谁啊?
For those fascinated by chronology, it's a happy coincidence that John Currin was born in 1962. In that year,
因为那些根据年代表令人入神, 它\\\\\\\'s 约翰 Currin 在 1962 年出生的一个快乐的巧合. 在那年内,
Roy Lichtenstein had his 1st one-man show at the Leo Castelli Gallery, and to the horor of all sensitive, art-loving people, set forth a new vision of what might be called "American Grotesque".
Roy Lichtenstein 在狮子座 Castelli 回廊有了他的第一场一男人的表演, 而且对所有敏感又爱好艺术的人的 horor ,发表什么可能是 called\\\" 的新视觉美国怪异图案\\\".
(ZT)Look forward to your John Curin (2).
+要求翻译~ :))
眼科医生 发表评论于
木兰, your English is almost as good as your Chinese writing.I have seen Curin's show,his wife Rachel is also an oil artist, but since Curin became famous, never herd she worked again, they live in the west Village....Look forward to your John Curin (2).