Homemade Pasta
Controversial and driven by his own unique vision, Currin is heralded as one of the most important artists of his generation and more specifically in the powerful position of re-directing art history back to discussions of painting's relevance and closing the gap in the disjointed lineage of genre painting. Homemade Pasta is a major work by the artist, complete with present-day cultural complexities and multiple art historical precedents.
American genre paintings of all types seem to compel Currin. Norman Rockwell's obvious and pleasing narratives, as well as Maxfield Parrish's glibly stylized works can be seen as precursors to Currin, particularly in their desire to tell a simple and innocent story. In effectively the same format as Rockwell and Parish, Currin seeks to bring a truly contemporary message to his works and interweaves the social, the political and the humorous, at times with impunity.
In Homemade Pasta, Currin paints a blissfully dull domestic scene-a couple standing in their kitchen engaged in the clichi gourmet act of home-making pasta. The Italian red checkered apron, restaurant-style wire rack shelving, and the semi-professional hand grinder tell the viewers that we are in a late twentieth century urban American kitchen, influenced by the do-it-yourself sophistication of television cooking shows, Martha Stewart and the American desire to embrace international cuisines. In Currin's matter-of-fact rendering, the couple of today is a gay male couple. They are exquisitely realized in perfect detail and Currin's painterly virtuosity is flexed. But contrary to historical imagery of gay male couples (if there is such a thing), they are the antithesis of sexual beings. Currin has been able to demonstrate that the two men share affection for another without actually showing it.
The subjects in Homemade Pasta speak to a truism about gay domestic life in the post-AIDS era - cozy at home, yearning for marriage rights, warm guys who seem to vaguely look alike as a side effect of all their years together. While the subjects are utterly ordinary looking, Currin has not forgotten their subtle affectations - thick middles and narrow shoulders, elongated, delicate fingers, hairless faces. The painting is clearly affectionately rendered, but Currin's attention to detail can make even the gay viewer squeamish. So startlingly true to life, it's gay life sans lifestyle.
As Currin takes his place in art history, his indelible mark will no doubt be on how he re-affirmed the power of genre painting. By looking at scenes from everyday life with his unique lens of unconventional beauty, Currin brings to light just how socially and aesthetically transgressive turn of the millennium American culture looks. Busty females at the bra shop, nude women of impossible proportions intertwined against a black backdrop, two bare-backed men biblically perched on the back of a fishing boat, a gay couple preparing a meal in their kitchen - Currin is never short on compelling, if even at times archetypal visuals. He true genius however is his capacity to re-convert all of us again to the luscious spectacle of great painting.
