John Currin: Men

A revealing look at the evolution of male iconography in the work of one of the foremost painters of his generation.

Since raising the ire of the early-1990s arts establishment with his deliberately provocative portrayals of women, John Currin has been best known for his brazen, militantly incorrect female iconography. Yet Currin has represented a range of masculine identities throughout his career as well.

This volume is the first to focus exclusively on this aspect of his work, examining the evolution of his equally provocative depictions of men. It ranges from little-known early works on paper and a series of kitschy paintings of men with beards to signature eccentric figures such as the elderly reader in the painting 2070 (2005) and his more baroque genre scenes featuring male couples. Published to accompany the exhibition John Currin: My Life as a Man at the Dallas Contemporary, it offers a revealing new assessment of Currin's pictorial examinations of sexual politics.Alison M. Gingeras is a curator and writer based in New York and Warsaw. Naomi Fry is a staff writer at the New Yorker. Jamieson Webster is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York.