In part, the answer lies with the shifting tides of artistic fashion. The story of Currin's rise to prominence generally begins in the early '90s, when political correctness held sway in the art world and highly visible exhibitions like the Whitney Biennial were filled with photography, video, and installation art dealing with politics and issues of identity. Painting—figurative painting in particular—was conspicuously absent. Currin, who had recently completed his M.F.A. at Yale University, was living in Hoboken, N.J., and trying to figure out how to break into the New York art world. As he tells it, he realized that the best way to stand out from the crowd of aspiring young artists was to do the thing nobody else was doing. So, he started making modest, easel-sized paintings, mostly portraits of young women loosely based on high-school yearbook photographs. "You get a lot of attention if you just play it straight," he said recently.