To paint is to love again

All artworks copyright John Currin, courtesy of Gagosian More than 20 years ago, at a time when art critics were proclaiming the death of painting, John Currin’s technically astounding, exaggeratedly realistic figurative oil paintings rattled the cage of the contemporary art world. Coming out of the blue, this young painter brought to mind the way Francis Picabia pivoted from Cubism and Surrealism to painting pinups, which garishly transgressed any resemblance to the academic nude. He not only changed minds about painting, but also unabashedly brought it back. John Currin paints women — sexy, confident, often saucy, slightly distorted women, who displayed themselves without flirting for approval. Robert Crumb meets Jacopo Pontormo. They are as voluptuous as a Fragonard, as detailed as a Hans Memling, and as airy and in-your-face as a photo-portrait by Thomas Ruff. Currin paints the kind of hyper-effusive breasts seen only on a radical porn site, but…