John Currin has done some good paintings but this isn’t one of them however it’s expensive because he’s done some good paintings.
‘Money is truth, truth money,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
I don’t see anything really wrong with the painting, but I have trouble seeing it as worth $1.9 million. The artwork is nothing special, hell, I bet there are MUCH better fakes out the on the Internet. Very average sort of painting.
No kidding. I don’t get the equation “not sexually stimulating to me=gross.” Believe it or not, you can look at pictures of people without judging them solely on their fuckability.
And aside from that, I think the picture is fairly attractive, and the worst thing isn’t any of the nude bits, but her hair. 
I think that, at some point, the price of art becomes less about the art itself, and more a matter of showing off that you have the money to spend a couple million on something without practical use.
At least it didn’t show her dick.
What bothers me is that painting sold for twice what Eric Clapton’s “Blackie” went for at auction.
Why?
Heck, Jerry Garcia’s 14-pound, poorly-constructed-yet-iconic guitar Tiger went for more than Clapton’s Strat - so it goes.
More importantly - Blackie is an iconic, well-crafted object that has acquired value as Art. Currin’s work is straight-up no-value-as-object, Art-as-Idea Art. Apparently, his Idea (theme in his works) has been taken seriously enough in the Art world that his paintings command a premium…very different world vs. historic guitars…
Currin is a remarkably inconsistent painter. I saw a retrospective of his in Montreal a couple of years ago, and the paintings ranged from among the most impressive pieces I’ve ever seen to poorly conceived and executed dreck.
Treat all links below as NSFW, although they are legitimate art.
Just as context - he is frequently all about the slight grotesque.
In this one, he takes an otherwise lovely painting of a young woman and imposes ridiculous hands on her. I saw this in person, and the effect is incredibly disconcerting. But admittedly, the title is completely accurate!
He had done many of his wife - sometimes, distorted, sometimes not. This one is lovely and masterfully executed.
This one is a characterture.
One of his best combinations of painting mastery and eroticism is Purple Bra, which really, really isn’t safe for work. But a masterpiece.
So, it’s kind of interesting where he was going with Bea Arthur. On the one hand, it is a very faithful depiction of a middle aged woman, nude. On the other hand, well, the comments up thread suggest it’s being taken as something different.
I find her tiny head to be more disconcerting. It’s easy to imagine that those arms belong to a guy just out of frame.
“We want naked pictures of Bea Arthur and a football helmet filled with cottage cheese.”
“Bea Arthur… outstanding.”