A Passion for Innocence

A PASSION FOR INNOCENCE: SEX AND SEXUALITY IN THE PAINTINGS OF JOHN CURRIN explores how paintings of the leading contemporary American artist John Currin (b. 1962) from about 1990 to 2010 divulge and represent anxieties over and changes in concepts and imagery of sex and sexuality in American culture. The paintings are divided into two groups. The first group of paintings of the 1990s portray in varied ways the deep and unsettling, yet furtive anxieties over sex and sexuality bound into identity, social and personal relationships, and public life. The second group of paintings during the first decade of the 21st century portray resolutions to these anxieties as these resolutions have come about in homosexuality, including lesbianism, individuals' comfort with and display of their own sex and sexuality, and prevalent public imagery entailing sex and sexuality. Over this period of roughly two decades, Currin's paintings reflect the supplanting of a traditional, Puritanistic regard of sex and sexuality with one originating in the Biblical tale of the Garden of Eden.