Men

"Men" is the first book to isolate the male figure in John Currin's painting, a body of work best known for its provocative women. It traces how his treatment of masculinity has shifted across three decades.

The volume moves from little-known early works on paper through a series of deliberately kitschy paintings of bearded men. It closes with later signature figures, among them the elderly reader of "2070" (2005) and baroque genre scenes of male couples. Rizzoli published it with Gagosian to accompany the exhibition "John Currin: My Life as a Man" at the Dallas Contemporary. Curator Alison M. Gingeras contributes the main essay, with texts by Naomi Fry and Jamieson Webster.

Currin emerged in the early 1990s with paintings of women that drew immediate controversy for their exaggerated, art-historically loaded eroticism. He has stayed one of the most closely watched figurative painters of his generation since. "Men" reframes his career around the subject his female portraits had long overshadowed.