John Currin's Pushkin Girl shows a bit of flesh. Photograph: © John Currin/Sadie Coles HQ
Alexander McQueen, Jake Chapman, Juergen Teller, Wolfgang Tillmans, Paul Simonon, Neil Tennant, Janet Street Porter, Sam Taylor-Wood, Michael Wojas (proprietor of arty private members' club The Colony Room), Hugh Grant, Mick Jagger, L'Wren Scott and Lucian Freud. Lucian Freud! And of course, John Currin and wife, artist Rachel Feinstein. All standing in a room together. All looking at paintings in a gallery in Mayfair, inspired by or taken from Danish pornography. The mind boggles with the post-modern post-post-modernism of it all.
John Currin's latest exhibition is extremely rude. It features graphic depictions, painted in oils, mostly of people copulating. But the "celebrated" types named above seemed unabashed by the content - neither do the mere mortals also present appear to be shy. Currin is one of the world's foremost figurative painters. He creates images which both derive from the historical art "greats" (as diverse as Cranach and Otto Dix) and a distortion of fabled Americana. He first became famous for painting ladies with big boobs seen next to beardy, impotent old men. His work is clever, cruel, funny and technically impressive. What it fails to be, as the private view last night showed, is shocking.
This is no bad thing. When approaching a gallery full of, um, private parts (I was going to write cocks) you get the uneasy feeling that either people will be vomiting into their beer or stripping off, embracing the spirit of the work. Cheeks are not flushed, neither are trousers at half-mast. This is civil; even the cool odour of celebrity hath not got sweaty. Quips are plentiful as the still life of a set of porcelain plates and cups is deemed "simply too much!" by about a hundred wags (not to be confused with WAGS). The vase of flowers also elicits witty comments. Are we too British to mention the smut?
Of the "faces": one presumes that Grant and Jagger have enough cash sloshing around to buy half the exhibition without really noticing. But has Lucien Freud come here to pick up some ideas? The paintings are great, hilarious. Currin has mentioned in passing that they a comment on Islam's view of the west - he sees them as depictions of a free, libertarian Europe (he was aghast at the furore surrounding the Danish cartoon of the prophet Muhammad in 2005) - but this may be a red herring. The soft-focus ladies and addition of classical backdrops add a nostalgic feel to the works. Jewellery and textiles are painted with a hyper-realism. Hair (on the head, that is) is exceptionally detailed. There is something almost quaint about how he deals with the subject matter, and that is not a criticism.
Currin said recently in an interview that they are "very unsexual paintings"; he's right. These are painting which have been thought about, studied. The acrobatic nature of some of the scenes also take away any of the "porny" element. "How on earth can they do that?", one thinks. Well, I did. Perhaps I'm a bit repressed. Currin has also stated that: "Stupidity is a theme for me in painting and I find it liberating." I cannot quite imagine another painter daring to go quite this far, or get quite so "stupid". I also can't imagine another painter to get such a crowd in.
"Hugh Grant winked at me!" says one girl as she leaves the gallery, beaming. "He winked at me." Perhaps the subject matter did have an effect on certain visitors, after all.
