20 Quotes by John Currin

I think a lot of people take a scholarly approach where they feel like you’re supposed to study things that depress you.

It wasn’t really until after I got out of art school that I realized that I’d been doing that sort of for the audience, for that context. Somehow, being alone in the room, it made no sense at all to make those kinds of paintings.

I suppose the good artists, the righteous artists, somehow manage to be exuberant, and the embarrassed artist has this idea that everybody has to stop being so excited, which I find so distasteful.

It’s a huge thing when people realize across the culture that paper money is paper. And that there’s no fixed value – it’s all political. That all value is set by a political authority, basically.

There is, literally and figuratively, not a gold standard. That’s almost as big a problem in art as in the financial world. How do you affix a value to something that only has value because a certain number of people agree to believe in that value?

That was an important development for me, just realizing that you need to follow your pleasure, at least as a painter. I think any kind of artist needs to, no matter what you’re doing.

When I went to college, and I went to art school, I started to realize that Warhol was cool and that pop art was fun.

I think a big problem with art school is that it makes people feel like they have to be interested in everything that’s of high quality.

There’s nothing worse than people talking about theories and humor.