JOHN CURRIN (b. 1962) THE KENNEDY'S oil on c

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION

Provenance
Andrea Rosen Gallery, NEW YORK

Exhibited
NEW YORK, Andrea Rosen Gallery, JOHN CURRIN, October 17 November 22, 1997
RIDGEFIELD, CONNECTICUT, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, POP SURREALISM, June 7-August 30, 1998 (illustrated)
S. Boris, R. Steiner, and R. Rosenblum, JOHN CURRIN, NEW YORK, 2003, p. 12

Literature
S. Boris, R. Steiner, and R. Rosenblum, JOHN CURRIN, NEW YORK, 2003, p. 12

ANY ARTWORK IS SUBJECT TO MULTIPLE INTERPRETATIONS. ONLY SOME PROVOKE VIOLENTLY OPPOSED READINGS, EVEN BY THE SAME INTERPRETER.
B. Schwabsky in D. Frankel, ed., CARNEGIE INTERNATIONAL 1999-2000

John Currin is an artist who fully capitalizes on this idea and it is visible in his obvious mastery of his chosen medium.

Working in a number of distinct pictorial styles over the past decade Currin has drawn his inspiration from high art—German Rococo, Mannerism and the Northern Renaissance—as well as from "sub-cultural" ones—the "illustrative slickness" of Norman Rockwell, pin-up girls from assorted men's magazines or high school yearbooks. This variety of styles has allowed him to dwell on the cutting edge of the contemporary art world and simultaneously within a world dictated by and strengthened by tradition. He manages to bring forth his ideas with a certain subtle force that both pushes away and draws in his audience.

"[Currin] channels his aggressiveenergy into his paintings which arelike his arguments, well conceived, sophisticated, layered and always delivered with a strong dose of humor […]. Currin has stated 'he is not in love with the viewer. There is an assumption that the artist is supposed to put [his] arm around the viewer and step back to admirethis thing that [he's] made. I always thought it should be the opposite it should be an antagonistic relationship'" (S. Boristakenfrom, S. Boris, R. Steiner, and R. Rosenblum, JOHN CURRIN, NEW YORK, 2003, p. 47).

Given his conviction, John Currin has managed to render something challenging and new in the most conventional packages. He is an astute observer of human nature, delighting especially in the wicked. The present lot, THE KENNEDY'S, illustrates fully his ability to do so.

The American preoccupation with the Kennedy family is a cultural phenomenon that many artists have capitalized on over the past fewdecades. Perhaps the most recognizable of these instances is Andy Warhol's appropriation of Jacqueline Kennedy's visage. However unlike Warhol Currin has taken a different direction in his choice of exhibiting his KENNEDY'S. According to Currin, the idea for this painting came to him in a dream. In a comical twist he has created a stylized Kennedy with exaggerated and distorted facial features very similar in style to another portrait that he painted of Nadine Gordimer just one year later. The two figures themselves are distinctly and undoubtedly Kennedy's yet at the same time stylized, non-specific and contextually ambiguous. Furthermore, Currin takes the work one step further into the realm of psychological ambiguity by dressing one of the figures in woman's clothing.

Clearly an exercise in artifice, Currin has created a fiction in this painting that is simultaneously disturbing and exceedingly captivating. The sexual and contextual ambiguity of the figures brings to mind certain Freudian principals such as projection of self. The psychological questions evoked by this work are not easily answered and perhaps questions with out any concrete answers. Who are the subjects of this painting? John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy? Is the female figure really a man; a reflection of the femine found within its male counterpart? Two parts of the same whole? Is the female figure a representation of Jacqueline Kennedy, a woman transformed by Kennedy values and ideals to the extent to where she is no longer an individual but an extension the "Kennedy ideal"? The technical mastery by which Currin is able to capture and illustrate his familiar yet contextually ambiguous figures is seconded only by his ability to create a scene that is collectively psychologically enigmatic and beckoning to the senses.