Designing Women

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In the past several years Currin's work has taken another turn, toward genre scenes, mostly satires of the upper classes at leisure. If the follies of suburban wives are what you're looking for, then Stamford After-Brunch is just for you: a trio of young women sharing cigars and martinis in a nicely appointed living room. Outside their window, beyond their notice, the bare ruined choirs of winter loom. Three women together is a notion with long-standing cultural power. (Are they Graces? Fates? Witches?) And it's true that Currin's descriptive powers with paint are growing all the time. But is he content these days simply to tell jokes about the upper classes who buy his work?

Almost three decades after the death of Fairfield Porter, we could use a decent genre painter again, somebody who can fix a nuanced image of contemporary life that is good enough to compete with The Simpsons. (I hope I'm not setting the bar too high here.) But it would have to be somebody whose gifts extended beyond satire and irony. Currin has the technical skills. What he still seems to lack is the emotional range. For now there are wide registers of feeling that are beyond his scope. Now and forever? That's up to him.