Art

John Currin is all laid-back New York charm as, accompanied by wife and fellow artist Rachel Feinstein, he strolls up the courtyard to the Royal Academy. His show at Sadie Coles’ Mayfair gallery opens in less than two hours and he still has to varnish a painting beforehand, but he’s not flustered. ‘I’ve been really looking forward to this.’

Currin is here to see a show of one of his favourite artists, sixteenth-century German painter and printmaker Lucas Cranach the Elder. Although separated by five centuries these two figurative painters have a lot in common – not least success in their field. By his mid-fifties (in 1528) Cranach was the richest citizen in Wittenburg where he was court painter. Currin can’t yet boast that status but, still in his mid-forties, he’s achieved international success with solo shows at the Serpentine in London and Gagosian in New York. Both have also achieved celebrity and, in part, notoriety for their portrayal of the female form.

‘I just love this unusual pointy face’, Currin says, gazing at Cranach’s naked ‘Venus’ from 1532. ‘She’s not the ideal Roman-nosed woman you normally see, but more of a sweet, pretty girl.
Feature continues

‘What first interested me about Cranach’s nudes is that that they’re made-up bodies, constructed out of shape requirements that fill the space in the most beautiful way.’ It’s an aesthetic that Currin also employs, painting from life and mashing-up art history, magazine imagery and cartoons. ‘There’s also something about the hands and feet in Cranach’s nudes that’s unlike anyone else,' Currin continues. ‘It’s here in this great painting “The Three Graces” (1535) which I’ve never seen before. The feet are not only really large but have very sexy toes.’

Cranach’s languid, bedroom-eyed Venus (covering her nakedness with a gossamer veil so transparent that it highlights rather than hides what’s beneath) ruffled a few feathers back in his day but bypassed the censors because it was an illustration of ideal, allegorical beauty, rather than a real person. No doubt Transport for London had the same debate before displaying posters of ‘Venus’ to advertise the RA show. Even in the twenty-first century it took a temporary ban before she was allowed on to our tube platforms.

John Currin's 'Anniversary Nude', 2008 (Copyright the artist; courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London)

There are plenty of hands in Currin’s new show, although it’s not wispy veils that they’re fondling between their fingers, but each other’s genitalia. The majority of works are based on porn from the 1970s and ’80s, before such ‘ordinary’ female bodies were banished to the pages of Readers’ Wives. Executed in Currin’s luminous old-master colours, they’re a compelling mix of sexual imagery and painterly technique.

Surprisingly it’s not the risqué subject matter that unsettles but the changes in style and skill within each image – from realistic rendering of soft, peachy flesh tones and features to something more sketchy or slightly skewed. And it’s the less explicit paintings that are most seductive. So in ‘Stepmother’ only the woman’s face is shown (her expression leaving no doubt as to what’s taking place out of view), while ‘Anniversary Nude’ is a classic reclining female with a girly but flirty face that’s not dissimilar to the expression on Cranach’s Venus.

Both Currin and Feinstein are drawn to ‘Charity’ (1534), Cranach’s picture of a young mother, sitting naked and serene, suckling one cherubic child as two toddler-age boys cling on to her while an older girl stands nearby, clutching her doll. ‘What Cranach does here’, Currin says, ‘is combine almost naive craft painting in the landscape with the most mind-boggling, intense, old-master technique. And there’s almost a lack of concern for anatomical correctness and proportion, it’s all about the needs of the picture which is what makes it so great. It’s also just so morally good, and tender without being sentimental or cloying and I love Cranach for that, it’s something I aspire to in my painting. It’s a pretty irresistible picture.’ Feinstein adds: ‘We have two boys and that’s exactly what they do – jump all over you’. To which Currin replies: ‘We’re going to try for more kids when we get back; Rachel would like a girl.’ Cranach also had two sons first, followed by three daughters. Should Currin take after the senior painter in that respect, then the American couple will be performing some explicit antics of their own in the near future.

'Cranach' is at the Royal Academy until Jun 8, John Currin is at Sadie Coles South Audley St until May 10.