John S. Currie

[John Simkin]

John S. Currie is one of my favourite artists. In 1914 it was believed he would be one of Britain's greatest artists. Then he murdered his girlfriend and committed suicide. You can see a couple of his paintings and a photograph of the woman who he killed.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTcurrieJ.htm

[John Dolva]

John. I'm always interested in other persons critique of art and artists and would very much appreciate a statement of why you hold Currie in such high regard (his paintings of course). There seem to be very few if any high quality reproductions of his art on the web. I'd like to see some.

I wonder what he meant with including the word primitive in the name of the first painting.

[John Simkin]

John. I'm always interested in other persons critique of art and artists and would very much appreciate a statement of why you hold Currie in such high regard (his paintings of course). There seem to be very few if any high quality reproductions of his art on the web. I'd like to see some.

I wonder what he meant with including the word primitive in the name of the first painting.

John Currie was a member of a small group of British artists (often called the Coster Gang) who were trying to respond to the competition of the camera. Currie's "super realism" was way beyond his time and mirrored what happened in the 1960s. It would have been interesting to see how he would have responded to the First World War. His friends from the Coster Gang, Mark Gertler, Stanley Spenser and C.R.W. Nevinson, all changed direction as a result of their reactions to the conflict.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTnevinson.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTgertler.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTspencer.htm

If I had to predict his future direction I would suggest he would have followed Spencer and painted pictures like this:

http://badarthistory.blogspot.com/2009/09/stanley-spencer.html

[John Dolva]

John. I'm always interested in other persons critique of art and artists and would very much appreciate a statement of why you hold Currie in such high regard (his paintings of course). There seem to be very few if any high quality reproductions of his art on the web. I'd like to see some.

I wonder what he meant with including the word primitive in the name of the first painting.

http://tars.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/neoprim.html

''Neo-primitivism <a href="http://tars.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/lario1.jpg" alt="Larionov: Soldier in the Woods"> In the West, Neo-primitivism was an aftermath of the exhibition of the folk arts of Africa, Australia, and Oceania in Paris. The world of art was surprised by the boldness of colors, originality of designs, and the expressiveness of these "unschooled," spontaneous creations of the "primitives." In Russia, flourishing between 1907-1912 and officially launched at the 3rd Golden Fleece Exhibition in 1909, Neo-primitivism was championed by Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, although many other artists went through a Neo-primitivist stage. The genesis of the style can be found in the folk art of Russia -- such as the lubok (popular print) and peasant applied art (distaffs, spoons, embroideries), but even more in icon painting. Goncharova, Larionov, Malevich, Tatlin, even Chagall and Kandinskii incorporated into their works ideas and compositions common in icon painting. Neo-primitivist canvasses share with icons a pronounced one-dimensionality (flatness), lack of depth and perspective, distortions of "reality," as well as a bold, striking colors. Although the forms are intentionally distorted and resemble children's pictures, the paintings' rhythm and harmony come from "the music of color and line" (Gray, 75). Larionov's Soldier in the Woods (1908-9), an early example from the Soldiers series, deliberately violates the laws of perspective by making the surface of the canvas flat and decorative. The proportions of the composition are distorted -- the horse is small and the head and hands of the soldier are unusually large. Moreover, Larionov employs a limited number of primary colors, applied without shading and blending. All these artistic devices find parallels in the art of the Russian folk, particularly in icons, street signs, wooden toys, decorated distaffs, and lubok (usually hand colored in red, green, purple, and yellow). [C.B. and B.B.]''

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I see a one dimensional photorealism indicating a use of lenses in the paintings that when mirroring the images, physical characteristics make sense, when compared to others, otherwise not.

This use of projective lenses is an old technique that in collages like this does not ask the artist to adhere to correct perspectives. In a way it is a highly skilled colourists production. Perhaps hence the reference to primitivism.