Lisa Yuskavage
[excerpt]

CL interviews JA

 

 

Cathy Lebowitz: In many of Lisa Yuskavage's recent paintings, someone is watching her naked women in the background. Tell me how it is with Lacan. Someone is always watching?

Josefina Ayerza: Lisa Yuskavage's recent paintings could be inferring a voyeur, which could even be you - the viewer - trying to see the woman as devoted to the jouissance of her own body and realizing that even in solitude she is looked at by an Other…

[...]

CL: And what about the painting where one woman presents herself to the viewer, naked, legs open, belligerent? Another woman stands behind her, very close, but in the shadows, with a mischievous expression. How might desire function here?

JA: I don't think the woman, legs open, belligerent, is in direct want of presenting her nakedness to the viewer. Her actual belligerence remits to the other woman, "standing behind her, very close, though in the shadows, with the mischievous expression," her hands, one on each side of the naked one's head positioning her. She could well be the one to orchestrate the exposure issue. [...]

 

Art: Lisa Yuskavage
Courtesy David Zwirner
Above: Afternoon Feeding, oil on linen, 86 x 71 inches, 2011
Right: Fireplace, oil on linen, 77 1/4 x 65 inches, 2010.

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