A painter in midcurrent: the recent survey of John Currin's paintings gave viewers in New York, Chicago and London an opportunity to assess the achievement of this provocative artist

In some ways this midcareer retrospective of John Currin's paintings felt like a throwback to the 1980s, when the Whitney routinely mounted big shows of the hot artists of the moment, even though it was the Chicago MCA and London's Serpentine Gallery that organized this exhibition. While one would hate to see the museum, which has recently hired a new director, resume its lockstep duet with the art market, there's a strong argument for making available to the public a generous selection of work by a much-talked-about artist. If such shows risk functioning as institutional seals of approval, they can also serve as testing grounds, occasions to see if the art lives up to the hype. It could be argued, for instance, that the critical reputations of Julian Schnabel and David Salle have never recovered from those artists' mid-'80s Whitney shows.

Looking at how John Currin's paintings have developed since 1989, one is struck by the artist's growing technical skills as a figurative painter. The earliest works on view--portraits of young women based on 1970s high-school yearbook photos--kept within a narrow range in terms of palette, brushwork and composition, not unlike the thrift-store portraits they evoked. These were followed by somewhat more nuanced pictures of somberly dressed, fashionably emaciated-looking older women. The clothes, poses and lighting in paintings such as Skinny Woman (1992) and Guitar Lesson (1993) suggest that Currin had come upon a trove of photographs by some upscale bohemian portrait photographer of the late 1950s.

The next body of work--Currin tends to produce paintings in easily identifiable groupings--essayed a garish illustrative style for portraits of louche male artist types, often accompanied by their adoring, big-eyed girlfriends in front of cloud-filled skies. In subsequent paintings, especially his large Cranachian nudes (1998-99) and suburban genre scenes (1999-2001), he significantly refined his technique by incorporating old-masterish modeling for the nudes and highly detailed drapery effects for the clothed figures. Through his painterly skills, mannerist theatrics and sly interweaving of personal obsession and intentional tweaking of social taboos, Currin has always been able to make paintings that instantly capture the viewer's eye. But, this exhibition impels one to ask, to what ends?

In his mid-'90s depictions of enormous-breasted women, Currin made what remain the most audacious paintings of his career. Unlike the Chapman brothers' contemporaneous sculptural experiments in radical plastic surgery, Currin's paintings combine a cartoonish vision of human sexuality with a sophisticated understanding of spectatorship. As Barry Schwabsky has previously suggested in these pages [see A.i.A., Dec. '97], canvases such as The Bra Shop (1997) indict the exploitative potential of painting as an instrument of the masculine gaze even as they deliriously surrender to that very mode. Another memorable canvas from this period is The Kennedys (1996). Unfortunately absent from the show, this is a murky, weirdly compelling double portrait in which two grinning, oversize heads of JFK appear atop the bodies of a drably dressed man and woman. Part faux-amateur portrait, part Mad magazine caricature, The Kennedys, like Currin's big-bust paintings, benefits from the artist's intuitive grasp of the images that lurk in the recesses of the average American psyche.

Currin has since sought to broaden his work with genre paintings of stylish young revelers, such as Park City Grill and Stamford After-Brunch (both 2000). In interviews, Currin claims the status of social commentary for these advertising-photo-based canvases, which do indeed offer strikingly ludicrous vignettes of prosperous America. And yet, something keeps these paintings from being wholly effective as satire. Writing in the show's catalogue, one of the curators, Staci Boris, suggests that these works are compelling because they bring "the grandeur of oil painting" to caricaturelike images. This may be so, but to my eye their almost fetishistic attention to detail trumps whatever social commentary might be intended, though Currin does strike a better balance in his portraits of male couples (Homemade Pasta, 1999, and Two Guys, 2001). The artist's attraction to visual opulence (the meticulous rendering of an extravagant blouse in Gold Chains and Dirty Rags, 2000) and symbols of affluence (the grand house and 1950s sports car inserted into the background of his Courbet-in-Connecticut picture The Gardeneers, 2001) seems to have more to do with seduction than with satire. Ultimately, most of Currin's recent paintings seem occasions for him to exercise his craft.

Although Currin identifies strongly with painters of the past, the historical figure he seems to resemble most is not an artist but a writer: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Like the author of Tender Is the Night and The Great Gatsby, Currin is entranced with his chosen medium and takes pride in his mastery of a fine style. The work of both men frequently marries bravura effects with images of beauty and glamour. Judging by Currin's elaborate paintings of upper-middle-class life, he also shares the writer's interest in the behavior of the well-to-do. And like Fitzgerald, Currin often seems to harbor ambitions to grapple with the society around him, to create the painting equivalent of the great American novel.