Lisa Yuskavage likens the characters she paints to the elusive killers in David Cronenberg's "The Brood." Now, the woman at the center of "The Brood" is locked up in a mental hospital, and in order to "treat" herself, she creates characters...
[more]Lisa Yuskavage likens the characters she paints to the elusive killers in David Cronenberg's "The Brood." Now, the woman at the center of "The Brood" is locked up in a mental hospital, and in order to "treat" herself, she creates characters who escape her confinement and kill all the people persecuting her, in particular her mother and her husband's girlfriend. After summarizing Cronenberg's film, Yuskavage adds a typically insightful comment: "Cool, huh?"
So Yuskavage must imagine herself as the locked-up psychotic woman, engendering in her imagination -- and in paint -- homicidal characters capable of carrying out her destructive fantasies. In truth, however, her characters don't look so much homicidal as just disturbing: disturbing, repulsive, enticing, beautiful. And sexy? Some critics seem to think so. Others can't get over the noses. Yes, the noses are hard to miss. At times they are practically snouts. Ski slopes, they called such noses in high school, or skateboard ramps. The noses are noticeable.
And the breasts? They, too, attract attention. But it's not merely their obscenely plump and sometimes purple nipples that strike the unsuspecting viewer as strange. The breasts are disturbingly lopsided: as one sticks up, protruding at an odd angle from the body, another droops down, a diminutive, almost neglible, flap of skin. The proportions of Yuskavage's bodies are always skewed; she exaggerates inequalities to a disconcerting degree.
Still, these bodies do achieve a kind of balance. Their organs may be distorted, but the relations between them -- especially between nose and breast -- enjoy a peculiar harmony. You cannot but notice the equilibrium they strike, for example, in her "Foodeater" (1996). As the nose arcs up in one direction, a nipple, its mirror image, shoots out in the other: a distorted body that affects symmetry with as astounding aplomb. The expression on the girl's face is euphoric; the background is ethereal, wistful, a wash of sublime light; there is nothing to suggest discord or disturbance. Everything is blissful and good; in Yuskavage's world, girls play happily forever with their dolls.
No, no, no. It isn't at all like that. These girls are disgusting; they are monsters, pigs -- horrible, horrible creatures. Their fat bellies sag down over their pelvises; huge hips protrude at obscene angles; the proportions are all wrong. A malign world, a disjointed world, a nightmare.
Yuskavage's work enjoys this ambiguity. It floats between euphoric fantasy and terrifying dream. What could possibly be the intention behind her work? What message is Yuskavage trying to get across by painting these incomprehensible female bodies? Some critics have tried to pin her down as a feminist. Others, perhaps more prudent, resist such an interpretation. As Lane Relyea writes, "To attribute a critical position to Yuskavage's canvases seems a cowardly response, like reining in outlaws by deputizing them." In the end, the only plausible position seems to be the one Yuskavage herself has alluded to: she creates her characters in order to kill her enemies.
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