Rococo meets contemporary

Rachel Feinstein
Eva (parasol), 2005
pastel on paper
39 x 27-1/2 inches
Courtesy Marianne Boesky
*image from http://artcritical.com

A chat with a new colleague at the museum got me thinking about the artists I wrote about in my thesis oh so many 7 years ago. The artist who prompted my interest of Rococo and Baroque art in contemporary art was Rachel Feinstein. I saw a show of hers in a gallery when I was thinking about topics and I was hooked. This pastel has always been one of my favorites. Feinstein works in a variety of media including sculpture. It's quite hard to a do a quick search of her on the web because her and her husband, the artist John Currin, are quite the socialites and most of what one immediately finds are glamour shots and lot of articles sans images.

Figure times 3

John Currin
Thanksgiving, 2003
Tate Modern, London
oil on canvas


If you click on the title, you can see how the Tate breaks up its images and leads you to other works with similar subject matter and aesthetic features. I find the tree of the image really fascinating, by clicking on a subject (ie dining room, column...) you can see how many other works there are in the collection with that subject as well as link to the specific works. It is a great aid in research (and wandering as I often do :).

There is much to be discussed regarding John Currin, an artist both loved and disliked. I am drawn to this image due to not only the gorgeous rendering (something that no one can really dispute) but also the strangeness of the imagery. You may notice that all the women look similar (as often occurs) and they all have a likeness to his artist wife and muse, Rachel Feinstein (whose was a major player in my thesis). Currin's work usually covers, satirically, the topics of sexuality(his current work stems from 70's pornography), social themes and historical art themes.

Check out the slide essay "A Closer Look at John Currin" on Slate.com