John Currin emerged in the early 1990s along with a wave of other young artists who invigorated figurative art while questioning its conventions. He uses Northern Renaissance and early Mannerist painting, as well as the pages of popular fashion magazines, as inspiration for his masterfully crafted paintings. His portraits of women, who are often placed in unusual narrative situations, respond to the venerable yet problematic tradition of female representation both pre- and post-feminism.