John Currin @ Gagosian Gallery

Considering the fact that he's best known for his critically acclaimed paintings of "stupid women with big tits" you'd think we'd be bigger fans of John Currin, but despite all those quirky curves and remarkable technique we always felt like we were missing something about his work. Still, there are elements of several of the pieces in his current exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in New York City that we're definitely responding to. Could it be their increasingly refined brushwork? His subtle interplay between detailed observation and postmodern irony? Or maybe it's just the fact that a few of these paintings look like something Larry Flynt would have commissioned for the walls of the Sistine Chapel? We're so wowed by the painterly renditions of cock-stuffing (and so amused that they're likely to wind up hanging over the sofa in some big-ticket art collector's living room) that we can't quite make our usual art vs. porn jokes about them. Sometimes art just winds up in a class by itself.

· John Currin at Gagosian Gallery, Madison Avenue (gagosian.com)

See also:
· "What you need to know about John Currin" (Slate, 2003)
· "Currin Events/Money shots: Lasciviousness, voyeurism, and the inner life of paintings"> (John Currin exhibition review by Jerry Saltz @ Village Voice)