'I don’t think it’s helpful to get in the habit of avoiding mistakes. It’s not really a great moment in our culture right now. In a way, painting men, I know no one’s going to get upset with that.'
In the long, sensationalist history of first-strike art reviews, there’s a special place reserved for John Currin’s debut show in New York in 1992. There, the young Colorado-born, Yale-trained artist presented what would become his signature brand of clownish, ribald, highly academic figurative paintings of women. Famously , the critic Kim Levin encouraged readers to “boycott this show” in the pages ofOutrage is not a new invention—it has always played a part in the circus of the art world.
JACOBS: Does the decision to do this show now have anything to do with what’s happening in the culture at large? CURRIN: I guess so, but I don’t think it’s helpful in terms of making art. You can keep yourself out of trouble, but I don’t think it’ll help you make anything better. You can’t make mistakes if mistakes now carry such a high price. And so you end up retreating into your personal life. And speaking of midlife crises and sports cars and stuff, you retreat into yourself no matter what at a certain age, because you don’t have the stake in culture that young people do.
CURRIN: The mistakes that you should really regret are the ones that make things ugly, not the things that offend people. If you make a bad painting or a bad dress, that’s a mistake you should regret. And even those mistakes can later turn to gold. You make something embarrassing and terrible, but the reason you did it lingers, and without making mistakes, you’ll never make anything good. So I don’t think it’s helpful to get in the habit of avoiding mistakes.
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