Thirty of John Currin’s Controversial Women

John Currin: Playboy or satirist? Letch or latter-day Ruben? His paintings of nude women have been both reviled and — especially since his 2003 mid-career survey at the Whitney — revered. Fifteen years of his drawings, from the late eighties up to that famous show, are hanging in clusters at Andrea Rosen Gallery through next Friday. These watercolors, sketches, and charcoal works — many studies for paintings, but all of them stand-alone accomplishments — show all manner of women in the throes of provocation and nudity: the brassy seductress; the slim-hipped, sultry bohemian; the stealthily pretty mother (bulging breast stuffed in her baby’s mouth); the flirty Tomboy; and so on. See 30 of them in our slideshow.