John Currin

John Currin

The Bra Shop, 1997, oil on canvas

Kiev, 2008, oil on canvas

John Currin is a figurative painter influenced by Renaissance oil paintings, contemporary culture, politics, and women's magazines.

He creates parodies of our sex-obsessed culture through distortion of the human figure. Main themes include pornographic eroticism and manipulation. Often his portraits appear satirical, kitschy, and humorous. Over time his works have gotten much more explicitly erotic.

Will Cotton

Will Cotton

Ice Cream, 2009

Cherry Pop, 2000

Will Cotton juxtaposes landscapes of ice cream and candy, etc. with portraits of beautiful women. His works resemble a Candy Land scene or a gingerbread house. These utopias evoke sight, smell, touch, and taste.

He features elements of advertising, human desire, sugar, and sex (all relatable). He paints with old master technical precision. Some of his paintings appear to be photographs.

His use of color, usually pastel,  provides a dreamlike quality to his paintings.

Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown

Performance, 1999, oil on linen

Skulldiver III (Flightmask)

Cecily Brown's works ARE representational, although at first glance appear to be sloppy Rorschach-like ink blobs. Her paintings have been linked to Abstract Expressionism.

She creates expressive oil paintings of slippery body parts entwined, engorged, and ecstatic that form kaleidoscopically in the mind. She rides the line of abstraction, figuration, and pornographic abandon.

Her subject matter mainly centers around sexual pleasure, often public acts. She makes viewers question what they see by hiding her images in lavish folds of oil paint.

Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas' paintings blur the lines of race and identity. She is interested in the ambiguous divide between the public and private self. She also includes themes of sexuality, empowerment, and exploitation.

Formally she works from photographic imagery. The emotional, carnal quality of her images redefines the content of her sources. She uses oil paint on canvas in high contrasting colors or fluid watercolor on paper.