JOHN CURRIN. PAINTINGS - English Edition by Forma Edizioni

Editor of the catalogue Sergio Risaliti Editorial project and production Forma Edizioni srl, Florence, Italy redazione@formaedizioni.it www.formaedizioni.it Publishing and editorial coordination Laura Andreini Textual supervision Riccardo Bruscagli Editorial staff Valentina Muscedra Maria Giulia Caliri Gagosian Gallery: Elena Pinchiurri Iacopo Ceni Graphic design Elisa Balducci Vitoria Muzi Isabella Peruzzi Mauro Sampaolesi

JOHN CURRIN. PAINTINGS Museo Stefano Bardini, Florence 13 June – 2 October 2016

The curators would like to express their gratitude to:

Promoted by Comune di Firenze

Dario Nardella, Mayor of Florence

Curated by Antonella Nesi and Sergio Risaliti

Rachel Feinstein Melissa Lazarov Pepi Marchetti Franchi Rebecca Sternthal Suzanne Bennett

Exhibition management and supervision Pepi Marchetti Franchi, Rebecca Sternthal Partner Gagosian Gallery Main Sponsor Faliero Sarti Organization and coordination MUS.E Gagosian Gallery: Anna Page Nadin, Manuela Cuccuru

Photolithography Art & Pixel, Florence, Italy

Staging supervision

Printing Tap Grafiche, Poggibonsi, Italy

Gagosian Gallery: Antonello Martella

Translations Miriam Hurley Nicola Portolano

Graphic design Mallet Studio

Photo credits © Serge Domingie pp. 4-5, 8, 10-11, 16, 19, 20-21, 29, 72-73, 77, 83 © John Currin. Photography by Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, pp. 35, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53, 55, 57 © John Currin. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, pp. 33, 37

MUS.E

Shipping Gagosian Gallery: Dale Snepar, Antonello Martella Art handling and art work installation Arterìa Catalogue Forma Edizioni Press office

Opera Laboratori Fiorentini – Gruppo Civita Salvatore La Spina, Barbara Izzo, Arianna Diana

Comune di Firenze Elisa Di Lupo MUS.E Daniele Pasquini Gagosian Gallery Matilde Marozzi

Texts © The authors Interview with John Currin © Angus Cook and John Currin Originally published in John Currin, New York, Gagosian Gallery, 2011 The editor is available to copyright holders for any questions about unidentified iconographic sources. © 2015 Forma Edizioni srl, Florence, Italy All rights reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. First edition: June 2016 ISBN: 978-88-99534-17-2

Pages 4-5: Stefano Bardini Museum, Room of the Frames Page 8: Monumental Staircase Pages 10-11: Room of the paintings

John Currin Larry Gagosian

Monica Sarti Angus Cook AIEM Thanks to: The Municipality of Florence staff and in particular: for the Mayor’s Cabinet Office: Francesca Santoro, Manuele Braghero, Rita Corsini, Carmela Valdevies, Tommaso Sacchi; for the Florence Cultural Department: Gabriella Farsi, Emanuele Crocetti, Silvia Gozzi, Antonella Chiti, Laura Visentin, Cristina Poggi, Claudia Bardelloni, Maria Francesca Granelli and the entire staff of the Florence Civic Museums; for the Technical Services Department: Michele Mazzoni, Valter Masini Andrea Bonini The staff of MUS.E: Matteo Spanò, Elena Arsenio, Andrea Batistini, Andrea Bianchi, Paolo Borghigiani, Daniela Carboni, Giovanni Carta, Monica Consoli, Valentina Gensini, Michele Iagulli, Roberta Masucci, Cecilia Pappaianni, Daniele Pasquini, Barbara Rapaccini, Pier Luigi Ricciardelli, Chiara Romei, Francesca Santoro, Davide Serufilli, Lorenzo Valloriani, Valentina Zucchi The Gagosian Gallery staff and in particular: Emily Hodes, Anita Foden, Amanda Fischer, Darlina Goldak, Emily Florido, Brett Garde Laura Andreini, Maria Giulia Caliri, Marco Casamonti, Serge Domingie, Sylvie Garcia Bonas, Mara Martini, Valentina Muscedra, Antonella Nicola, Irene Nigi, Isabella Peruzzi, Mauro Sampaolesi, Elvis Shkambi, Elisa Stefanini Our special thanks to all the lenders of the exhibition

CONTENTS

Foreword Dario Nardella

The Wall: the Technique, Intuition, and Style of Stefano Bardini Antonella Nesi

John Currin. Paintings Sergio Risaliti

Works in the Exhibition

Interview with John Currin Angus Cook

Solo Exhibitions

Selected Group Exhibitions

Bibliography

THE WALL: THE TECHNIQUE, INTUITION, AND STYLE OF STEFANO BARDINI Antonella Nesi

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It’s undeniable. The attention of all who come to the visit the Stefano Bardini Museum is inevitably drawn to its walls; all different from each other, room after room, and each one emotionally seductive. In 1880 the antiques dealer Stefano Bardini was at the peak of his success when he decided to buy the old, abandoned convent of San Gregorio alla Pace in Piazza de’ Mozzi to transform it into a grand neo-16th-century Palazzo to exhibit the antiques he sold1. His intentions, however, are not perfectly characterized by the terms “antiques” and “exhibit”. “Antiques” cannot be applied since this name is better suited to a gallery or a public Museum. The name “exhibit” does not give justice to a brand new organization of the items to be sold, which aimed to show the antique stores at that time, where all the items were crowded and poorly displayed. Following the suggestion of Corinto Corinzi, Bardini designed large windows and a vast number of skylights to create rooms flooded with light, creating a stunning contrast with the heavy blue color applied on the walls. The merging of light and color brings all the different items to a new life, and additional enhancement is given by the contrast of the golden frames and the increased value of the painting laden on a background loaded by cold pigments. What is known as “Bardini Blue”, it is a combination of blue, indigo and violet, in various shades. A spectrum of shades of this peculiar formula was applied differently in each room by taking in account both the pieces, and the variety of lights that could have been found in each room. It is now well known the so-called cold colors suggest contemplation, rest, calmness, and relaxation. Indeed, this is why they are called cold, because rather than arousing strong emotions at first sight, they invite us into contemplation. Especially the blue color, with its lighter tones, has always been considered a particularly relaxing color, suggesting a positive thinking. Bardini already had the chance to appreciate the profusion of blue used for decorating the ballrooms and the drawing rooms in the houses of his wealthy Russian customers, although, using so much color in a building meant for business represented something entirely different. The Accademia Museum, where Bardini trained as a painter, had already experiences with the use of light blue to emphasize the golden backgrounds of the church altars. Two are the paintings by Odoardo Borrani, one in the Accademia Gallery itself and the other at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, that clearly show the use of color on the walls of a public Museum. Therefore we can see Bardini’s intentions to offer to his customers a place with a museum feeling, that could evoke the finest public museums in Florence even with the use of the color of the walls. This is further evinced with the central staircase of the building in Piazza de’ Mozzi, which resembles the one in the Bargello Museum, which is a medieval building that has been transformed into a museum to collect the Florence’s Medieval and Renaissance collections. Bardini’s association with the National Museum of Florence grew over

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JOHN CURRIN. PAINTINGS Sergio Risaliti

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The history of figurative art, from Giotto on, has been one accomplishment after the other. Much of this success can be traced to the rise of artistic individualism and the bourgeoisie, and the dialectical relationship between clients and artists. Each figurative accomplishment was immediately refuted by the next one. Every objective achieved was taken over by a new and different one. After the “apocalyptics” came the “integrated,” to cite Umberto Eco’s famous distinction between supporters and rejectors of mass culture, and individual artists established themselves by showing how they differed from the competition. Nonetheless, we should not look at this development as exclusively linear; it is far more complex and web-like, where progress is in many cases a response to interest in the past, such as when inspiration takes off from the rediscovery and recovery of materials and genres that are older, obsolete or buried. Artists feel free to roam through history in search of new adventures in style and new art companions. In this respect, creative freedom poorly tolerates academic impositions and ideological superstructures that impoverish the life of forms and repress visual content. An artist’s own career may follow a complicated path and it may be twisting and contradictory. Artists often betray themselves in the progression and consolidation of their artistic work so that they can fulfill new ambitions and instincts, or react to new tastes, interests, and wide-ranging social, political and economic conditions. This is why we often have the impression that great artists are reborn after their last work, even though their reputation is already established and their style widely recognized. The work of art comes as something foreign and surprising, attesting to its origins in a world of tangled connections and correlations, often throwing off the establishment of critics, ill-equipped to anticipate and then digest differences and detours. In this innovation, we can understand the gestation, birth and then growth of a pictorial and figurative world that did not exist before, now standing apart and distancing itself from most contemporary works, yet unexpectedly drawing near to others. In these cases, and in retrospect, art historians look to preparatory drawings to study the artist’s creative process from the early sketches. There is good reason that some artists got rid of their sketches. For instance, Michelangelo destroyed almost all of his sketches to avoid revealing to posterity his sources and many changes of mind, and the fact that one figurative idea may generate many others. Michelangelo is a perfect example of how a modern artist can progress by questioning his own assumptions, almost repudiating his formal achievements to meet the demands of a difficult, never satiated subjectivity, constantly overwhelmed by the power of carnal and spiritual love. Among 20th-century artists, Picasso offered up an excellent example of creative freedom; his artistic adventure was completely informed by irrepressible vitality and incomparable visual daring. Picasso was far from a linear, predictable artist. Willem de Kooning is another excellent example in many respects; he went against the expectations of his entourage and critics, letting himself be interested in the

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WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

The Penitent 2004 Oil on canvas 42 Ă&#x2014; 34 in Private Collection 44 / 45

Nude in a Convex Mirror 2015 Oil on canvas Diameter: 42 in Private Collection 58 / 59

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

John Currin was born in 1962 in Boulder, Colorado. He received his B.F.A. in 1984 from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, and his M.F.A. in 1986 from Yale University, Connecticut. He lives and works in New York.

2016 John Currin: Paintings. Museo Stefano Bardini, Florence, Italy. 2015 John Currin. Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA. 2013 John Currin. Gagosian Gallery, Paris, France. 2012 John Currin. Sadie Coles HQ, London, England. 2011 John Currin. DHC/Art, Montreal, Canada. John Currin meets Cornelis van Haarlem. Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands. 2010 John Currin: New Paintings. Gagosian Gallery, Madison Avenue, New York, NY. 2009 John Currin: Works on Paper, A Fifteen Year Survey of Women. Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, NY. 2008 John Currin: New Paintings. Sadie Coles HQ, London, England. 2006 John Currin. Gagosian Gallery, Madison Avenue, New York, NY. 2003 John Currin. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL. Traveled to The Serpentine Gallery, London, England; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. New Work 7: John Currin, Works on Paper. The Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO. 2002 Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA. 2001 Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, NY. 2000 Monika Spruth Galerie, Cologne, Germany. Sadie Coles HQ, London, England.

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1999 Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, NY. Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA. 1997 Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, NY. Sadie Coles HQ, London, England. 1996 Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA. 1995 Institute of Contemporary Art, London, England. Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, NY. Fonds Regional dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Art Contemporain, Limousin, Limoges, France. Donald Young Gallery, Seattle, WA. Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, CA. 1994 Galerie Jennifer Flay, San Francisco, CA. Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, NY. 1993 Critical Distance , Ado Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium. Galerie Monika Spruth, Cologne, Germany. 1992 Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, NY. 1989 White Columns, New York, NY.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2015 Beverly Hills 20-Year Anniversary Invitational Exhibition, 1995–2015. Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA. Summer Group Show. Gagosian Gallery, Madison Avenue, New York, NY. Unrealism. Moore Building, Miami, FL. America Is Hard to See. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Dans un Intérieur. Meubles, œuvres murales & textiles d’artistes. Almine Rech Gallery, Brussels, Belgium. As Is Is. Altman Siegel, San Francisco, CA. La Peregrina. Royal Academy of Arts, London, England. The Shell (Landscapes, Portraits & Shapes). Almine Rech Gallery, Paris, France. Sleepless — The bed in history and contemporary art. 21er Haus, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria. 2014 She: Picturing Women at the Turn of the 21st Century. David Winton Bell Gallery and the Cohen Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI. Somos Libres II: Works from the Mario Testino Collection. Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin, Italy. FIERCE CREATIVITY. Pace Gallery, New York, NY. 2013 NYC1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star. New Museum, New York, NY. 2012 The Deer. Le Consortium Dijon, Dijon, France. 2010 Crash: Homage to JG Ballard. Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London, England. In the Company of Alice. Victoria Miro Gallery, London, England. 2009 Mary Magdelene. The Metropolitan Opera, New York, NY. 2008 Diana And Actaeon-The Forbidden Sight of Nudity. Stiftung Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Bad Painting. Good Art, MUMUK, Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, Austria. 2007 Old School. Hauser & Wirth Colnaghi, London, England. Traveled to Zwirner & Wirth, New York, NY. Very Abstract and Hyper Figurative. Thomas Dane Gallery, London, England. 2006 In the Darkest Hour there may be light. Work’s from Damien Hirst’s Murderme Collection, Serpentine Gallery, London, England. Surprise, Surprise. ICA., London, England. Zurück zur Figur: Marlerei der Gegenwart, Kunsthalle der HypoKulturstiftung. Munich, Germany. Traveled to Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands. Painting Codes: I Codici della Pittura. Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone, Monafalcone, Italy. Prints. Sadie Coles HQ, London, England. 2005 Girls on Film. Zwriner and Wirth Gallery, New York, NY. Drawing from the Modern, 1975-2005, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Idols of Perversity. Bellwether, New York, NY. In Limbo. Victoria H. Myhren Gallery, University of Denver, CO. Getting Emotional. Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA. 2004 SITE Sante Fe’s Fifth International Biennial: Disparities and Deformations: Our Grotesque. SITE Santa Fe, NM. She’s Come Undone. Artemis Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York. Supernova: Art of the 1990s From the Logan Collection: Painting, Sculpture and Photography. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA. 2002 Drawing Now: Eight Propositions. The Museum of Modern Art, Queens, New York. Liebe Maler, male mir…Dear Painter,

paint me…Cher Peintre, peins-moi, Centre Pompidou, Paris. Traveled to Kunsthalle Wien, Austria, Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany. 2001 Naked Since 1950. C & M Arts, New York, NY. About Faces. C & M Arts, New York, NY. The Way I See It. Galerie Jennifer Flay, Paris, France. Drawings, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA. Works on Paper from Acconci to Zittel. Victoria Miro Gallery, London, England. 2000 Kin, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, Ireland. 00: Drawings 2000. Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY. Innuendo. Dee/Glasoe Gallery, New York, NY. Biennial. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Couples. Cheim & Read, New York, NY. 1999 I’m Not Here: Constructing Identity at the Turn of the Century. The Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA. Carnegie International 1999/2000, CI: 99/00.The Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA. The Great Drawings Show: 1550 to 1999. Kohn Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Malerei. INIT-Kunsthalle, Berlin. The Nude in Contemporary Art. Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CO. Troublespot Painting. Museum van Hedendaagse kunst Antwepren (MUIIKA), Antwerp, Belgium. Examining Pictures: Exhibiting Paintings. Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. Traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL. Etcetera. Spacex, Exeter, England. John Currin and Elizabeth Peyton. Capenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Salome: Images of Women in Contemporary Art. Castle Gallery, The College of New Rochelle, New York, NY. Positioning. Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

This volume was printed in June 2016 by Forma Edizioni, Italy

ENG

ISBN 978-88-99534-17-2