John Currin

But I did imagine maybe I would be an album cover artist or something like that.

But, because I didn't really know that art existed.

That was another actually very fortunate thing about moving to the East Coast was, you know, I went to the Metropolitan Museum and for the first time in my life saw, you know, a real painting.

I had grown up, well, I had grown up with paintings.

My parents had these beautiful reproductions of famous paintings that they had bought on their honeymoon in Florence.

So I had a very good reproduction of the...

of the Portonari Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes, which is still kind of almost my favorite painting in the world.

And I think they had also had Primavera by, you know, the Primavera, you know, they were like 20 inches by 18 inches or something of Botticelli.

And so when I was really little, I just kind of thought those were strange photographs.

But then, you know, then when I saw a real painting, when it was, I saw El Greco, big El Greco painting, and it was just, just astonishing.

I just, I couldn't believe my eyes that, you know, you know, it's roughly painted and huge and,

You know, it was not so much beautiful.

It was just, like, way more exciting than, you know, an album cover.

And just terrifically exciting, you know?

Anyway, once I saw that, I thought, I want to do that.

I want to make something like that.

Although I carried on making, like, dumb album cover art for years.

But that seemed to me, that was the first time I saw a real art.

Yeah.

Like, a real...