Girl in Bed

"I wanted to make a totally passive subjectI wanted to get away from the duality of the repressed woman and the repressed abstract painting behind her, and make the isolation of the figure more benign. So she's been isolated by being put in bed. She's awake-she's not sleeping, she's not sick, she's just a completely passive isolated watcher or spectator She just looks at things. It's an allegory of what you're doing when you look at the painting. She can't sleep because you're looking at the painting"
(John Currin discussing Girl in Bed, interviewed by Rochelle Steiner, John Currin, exh. cat., New York, 2003, p. 77).