Lisa Yuskavage: Private Parts

per request: thoughts on yuskavage
The thing about a knee-jerk is that it’s automatic and unthinking. The thing about Lisa Yuskavage is that she is most definitely not. The artist may describe her subject matter as a sort of psychosocial reflection but her execution, as anyone who has seen it in person will attest, is incredibly calculative. In terms of situating herself as a woman within the artistic tradition Yuskavage seems to occupy positional extremities, something I would akin to quilting with a strap-on. Her early work seemed to don a Rembrandtian sfumato in drag. Figures appear to be suspended in cotton candy colored atmospheres. Bodies accessorize nipples, while forms accessorize light and color. Criticism of Yuskavage has tended to look more like a psychological worksheet before a session commences than any kind of collective or conclusive response to her work. This, presumably though, is the point. Yuskavage’s paintings grow from a tradition of incredibly thorough studio training but also, before that, childhood drawings of private parts. Her oeuvre is soaked in the admiration of canonical painters. She invokes the Italian Rennaissance as well as the masters of Mannerism; some of the most recurring namedrops include Pontormo, Bellini, Vermeer and Degas. She is an amazingly adept painter although viewers tend to be pre-occupied by the contentious subject matter. These Rorschached paintings rarely give off just ink.
In 2000, Yuskavage shifted from her more ambiguous atmospheres to descriptive spaces referential of narrative structures and an academic realism tradition. She moved from ya-ya drawings, if you will, into a dollhouse where her toys play with one another. Yuskavage contends that these are more about the dynamics of female interaction than sexual scenarios but by Pond of 2007, this most assuredly cannot be the case. Power struggles still ensue, but girl on girl action unfortunately tends to overshadow that discourse. Yuskavage’s recent work is like playing badminton with a football. She uses the most gracefully adroit hand to paint the most gauche and awkward of scenarios. In Reclining Nude (2009), an eerie toddler’s silhouette backdrops a panty-less crotch shot framed with tube socks while in Snowman (2008) an even eerier pink babe foregrounds an expecting mother who splits into a gray Yuskavage landscape. These paintings exhibit stickily exquisite ambiguity similar to a freaky dream.
Yuskavage once said in reference to Degas and Manet, “You don’t paint something for years that you hate,” but I would contend that we are most fascinated with that which tortures us. Typically, it is what we want most that induces the most potent agony. I can’t help but think of my favorite Madonna by Munch. Yuskavage paints her demons beautifully. I would argue that it is what we do not have that, at once, holds us back and drives us forward. It is the longing that prevents fulfillment, which distracts the most. What impedes one’s happiness seems to, thus, serve as the most proper confrontation. As of late, pie-covered faces and odyssey-latent landscapes provide this distraction for Yuskavage. Perhaps it is not what she wants, but what she wants to let go of. I am still not quite sure what to think of Yuskavage’s work. I like the fact that it doesn’t feel deconstructive. I think that at least one of its functions has the tendency to be undermined by a cultural de-sensitivity to images. In it’s defense though, not seeing the paint in person is like having every other sentence missing.
In February I had the pleasure of having cocktails with Madame Yuskavage at the Columns Hotel before a lecture she gave at Tulane. Both the 'lecture' and the artist were exactly what I had imagined they might be..... Yuskavage danced around questions...."if that's what you see then that's what you see" kind of thing. Intelligently aware, almost annoyingly so, of the risks associated with any definitive answers to the questions concerning her work. Last I checked she was one of the highest paid female artists in history living or dead.....(I think Marlene Dumas has topped her with “The Teacher (sub a)” (1987)$3.34 million, but I'll have to double check.) Yuskavage is included in The Female Gaze at Cheim & Read, a first rate line up of contemporary female artists including Dumas and Bourgeois and Kara Walker - the usual suspects.....more to come on Yusky and the exhibition later...