20 Quotes by John Currin

Instead of last man standing, it’ll be last man smiling.

Painting is like being a lawyer and attacking a corporation.

There is no misery in art. All art is about saying yes, and all art is about its own making.

Your style is who you are when you’re not trying to be clever or better than you actually are.

There is a fascination with violence and power in all modernism, and I sort of saw classic modernism as being more similar to Wyndham Lewis than to the Renaissance. It’s not about flow and the presence of humanism and all those things.

I find I can’t get rid of my trashiness as an artist. A lot of my themes in painting, to the extent that there are intentional themes, are meant to bring that conundrum into high relief.

A lot of times maturing as an artist is just starting to do the things you like to do.

Just don’t do things that depress you. I realized if it depresses me, then I just don’t want to get close to it. If it brings me down, I just really can’t get into it.

A painting of any quality is always going to have nerdy energy, an affirmation behind it. It’s gonna be like a kid playing a video game.