“John Currin—at this point, I'm not even sure why I'm paying attention to John Currin and what, I, personally, could gain from investigating his work extensively. Part of the reason I'm trying to persist with this is because I'm a little mystified by all the champagne corks popping in his direction. It's not that John Currin is a bad painter (though some of the paintings in the retrospective are actively, pointedly bad), it's just that he's obviously not any sort of genius or anyone with a startling talent, who we'll be talking about in 50 years. Hopefully.” — Number One Hater [see review]
“But he also injects just enough irony into his work to inoculate it against the possibility of debilitating failure. Because when a figurative painting goes wrong, the result can be really embarrassingly bad. When one of Currin's paintings goes wrong, his sly humor, perversity, and bad-is-good sensibility come running to the rescue. All of which makes Currin's work easy to like, but hard to love. ”— Number Two Hater [see review]
More Balanced Review? Try Rimanelli
My take? I don't have a position yet. I just want to see more blood.