Idealizing Innocence: Lisa Yuskavage's Process of free Association

Idealizing Innocence: Lisa Yuskavage’s Process of Free Association 

Lisa Yuskavage’s artwork consists of highly sexualized, but seemingly innocent, subjects with exaggerated anatomy and suggestive positioning. Her work leads some critics to accuse Yuskavage as pandering to the male gaze and thus continuing the history of objectification of the female figure. However, Yuskavage admits that despite being aware that the viewer will perceive her subjects as “sex machines” she is also “trying to include how they feel about their own predicament.” This is best explored through a process of free association, a process of one word or image spontaneously suggesting another without any apparent connection, which is what Yuskavage uses throughout the evolution of creating her work Triptych, 2011. In an interview with Monica De La Torre she admits that she likes to reach into the unknown to figure out where the painting is going, explaining further that, “I put the canvases up on the wall in a bunch of different positions, stepped back, took cheap snapshots. I drew on the printouts to get possible ideas of what was meant to be there, took more snaps, and printed them out. Nothing was doing it for me.” This process of indecisively pushing and pulling on compositional elements and the role of the subject are what allows Yuskavage to paint such provocative work without pandering to what anyone wants or perceives, but herself. 

Lisa Yuskavage’s Triptych was worked on from 2010 to 2011, it consists of three canvases painted in oil on linen substrates that measure 77 by 70 inches each, or 77 by 210 inches all together. These three panels are bound by a continuous landscape, while each represent the tripartite structure of id, ego, and superego. The canvas on the left was the original image that started the whole process, which turned out to be a long winded answer to the question of “…if the character was looking at something off to the left.” The canvas on the left has a centered composition with its subject directly in the midground in space and directly in the middle of the painting. It shows a young girl laying on her stomach facing away from the viewer with her legs spread open. Wearing thong panties, she is not completely naked, but is still seemingly provocative, contrasting with the fact that she is eating a popsicle in a very innocent and childish way, (the painting inner ego) she looks into the distance as if there is another world beyond. 

The right panel is mostly empty in the foreground and middle ground with the only subjects shown way in the background, two people acting as the observers to what is happening in the middle; or as Yuskavage explains, “a chorus of figures showing women with their hands on their hips [as if they are saying] ‘No, Lisa. Don’t.’” These peasant women are inspired by women that she encountered during her honeymoon in Russia, or as she calls them, “nel’syas”. From this time period Yuskavage tells a story about visiting museums in Moscow in 1992, the docent ladies, “… with their babushkas, their slippers, and their housecoats would sidle up to me and say, ‘Nel’zya’s!’ it means don’t! Whatever the hell you were thinking of just don’t.” These peasant women are in the background of this triptych to intentionally play the role of the super ego within this tripartite structure in the concept of Triptych. In this instance Yuskavage is giving the role of the super ego to be the one to say, “don’t”. Yuskavage admits that she used images of the 19th century peasants because, “there must be at least one of them running around inside of me somewhere.” She continues that self-relatedness is a joy for her, because although it is very organized, it came completely out of disorder. 

The middle panel shows a girl in the foreground laying on her back on an askew bench but her body and pelvic area are pointing directly at the viewer, or as Yuskavage calls it, “…an Etant Donnes-ish crotch shot”. Her legs are spread enough to show that she is bottomless but is wearing a bright pink dress which is pulled up and ruffled. This is all you can see of the subject in the middle panel, her torso arms and face are overlapped by her legs and pelvis. In the very foreground there are kitchen utensils that seem to almost come off the composition towards the edge of the canvas. Yuskavage call these her tools of reason, but it’s a mess, because your subconscious is a mess that reasons. Or a place of reason that is chaotic. She liked how it couldn’t be concealed. It’s like seeing under the girl’s bed and gleaning her true state of mind. While referencing the fact that the girl looks headless Yuskavage mentions how people say “I lost my head” when their behavior lacks reason. This suggests that the girl’s behavior could also be a reflection of Yuskavage’s behavior lacking reason as well. In the very background there are more observers on the same plane as the figures in the panel on the left. These observers are all stagnant, fully clothed and seemingly fully aware of what we (the viewer) are looking at. This triptych has an analogous color scheme ranging from emerald green, to lime green, and then to a dull yellow ochre, but each panel has the most subtle detail of hue contrast (red or pink) that acts as a guide for the focal point. The color acts as a guide to explore the narrative as your eyes cascade around the canvas. Yuskavage also added a sapling on the far right of the composition in order to intentionally stop the action. It’s a specific tree, one of those weedy trees that you cut back but keeps growing. Yuskavage placed it there as a bracket that tells the eye to stop. There is a specific duality at play between sexuality and formalism within Catholicism: good and evil; heaven and hell; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; the twelve Apostles; the Ten Commandments; the Stations of the Cross. Everything is always organized. Three canvases with three different stories permeated through the formal aspects of her work. This is an extension of breaking down the social types of women. Inward looking, acting as much psychological as social.

The fact that Yuskavage’s figure in the middle canvas is reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’s Etant Donnes, 1946-1966, gives us a chance to parallel some of the intentions and formal aspects between two very different processes but two very similar points of view of the same subject matter. Etant Donnes is a work of art that does not particularly match other pieces from Duchamp’s work.  Because of the secrecy surrounding its construction over the years, and because of the nature of the piece itself, Etant Donnes will always remain far more inaccessible as a work of art than Duchamp’s other major works, but there can be no question that this is a major work ranking with the others. It is not perhaps the culminating piece of his career, but rather one which was inextricably interlocked with the thoughts and visual conceptions which made up his past (and present) as an artist. Etant Donnes is a complex assemblage of materials and techniques, lit from within by hidden lights and complete with a small electric motor. Some of the elements – the nude figure, the landscape—were clearly made by hand with great care. In the center of a large stuccoed wall is a large arched doorway made of old bricks, framing an old Spanish wooden door. The door has two small holes, and if they are peered through the viewer sees a brilliantly illuminated landscape along with a nude woman lying on her back among a mass of twigs and leaves. Like the figure in the panel in the middle, her face is farthest away from the viewer and is hidden from sight. Her legs extend toward the door and her feet are obscured by the brick wall. Her right arm cannot be seen, but her left arm is raised, and in her hand, she holds up the vertical glass fixture of a small gas lamp, which glows faintly. The scene and the landscape in the background are startlingly naturalistic and eerily unreal, the focal point falls on the one man made object in view: the little gas lamp, whose incongruity is yet an integral part of the whole conception. Before his death he took the time to write out careful instructions for dismantling, moving, and reassembling the work. He kept thoughts about the intentions of the piece to himself. In a similar vein, when Yuskavage was told that her triptych piece was so not of this world and that it seemed more surreal than fantastical, Yuskavage admitted that, “This actually feels more metaphysical to me. Chirico’s Scuola Metafisica has always been more interesting to me than Dali’s other surrealist work. Surrealism at its best is automatism [creating from the subconscious]. The process in these new pictures is not so much automatism as free association [a process of one word or image spontaneously suggesting another without any apparent connection]. It’s as if the process in its purest form, without any intention other than formalistic compositional elements, unity within a body of work, and general problem solving over a period of years is all that Yuskavage and Duchamp needed to conceive of while making these works of art; which successfully acted as gut punches to the public. Besides the representation of the female figure Duchamp got criticized for not staying true to the body of work that defined his career. In response Duchamp says “I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.” Etant Donnes looks radically unlike anything else Duchamp ever did. It bristles with cross-references, visual and conceptual, to many other objects and verbal constructs by Duchamp, and was created within the same highly personal, logical, and poetic system for subverting our assumptions about reality. 

Can Lisa Yuskavage’s work be seen as a hybrid between objectifying and liberating the female figure? Considering Lisa Yuskavage’s body of work as enticing and highly sexualized it is easy to understand anyone’s unnerving response. On one hand, the color scheme, composition and technique of the application of paint easily puts her on the list as a competent contemporary artist, but on the other, her subject matter could be seen as counter intuitive toward the modern mission of feminism and equality. People too easily project their own preconceived notions without truly pondering the psychology behind her work. In A Conversation with Katy Siegel she tells a story about being criticized by a YouTube troll saying, “she clearly desperately wants to be like the woman in her paintings, but can’t”. Yuskavage admits that she should be open to considering that perspective. Reinforcing this point, she remembers seeing women in Penthouse as a young girl and thinking to herself, “If that’s a woman, then what the fuck am I?” reading that critique rang a bell in her awareness of herself.

There are important points to consider while trying to understand Lisa Yuskavage’s work; such as: voyeurism, humor, “the gaze” (both male and female) and the sexual orientation of her subjects. In an interview with Chuck Close Yuskavage admits that she suspends any ideological posturing during her process. She makes work about how things are, not how they should be. Doesn’t use a model for reference because she wants “something to fight with in order to get it out of her head”. A model would be a real person with random visual information, and she needs to be with her own thoughts. This is intended for these paintings to be about an idea and not a person. Tamarra Jenkins shares a quote that explores this ideology deeper, where Lisa Yuskavage says, “I exploit what’s dangerous and scares me about myself: misogyny, self-deprecation, social climbing, the constant longing for perfection. My work has always been about things in myself that I feel incredibly uncomfortable with and embarrassed by. There’s a Paul Thek quote that I read in one of his sketchbooks, ‘make a list of all your fears, phobias… Xerox it and pass it out.’” As an undergraduate Lisa followed Thek’s advice by modeling for life drawing classes at Tyler University. She only modeled in front of incoming freshmen as to never be recognized by her fellow classmates. This taught her the valuable lesson to see what it feels like to be on the other side of the canvas.

Lisa Yuskavage’s sensibilities about the moral guidelines within art also comes from being raised in an environment with great wit and raunchy humor. There is value in this unapologetic crassness that she uses to inspire her process. Yuskavage is not trying to sell you a sugar-coated product but instead is challenging the way you view society through aesthetic exploration. Yuskavage admits in an interview with Chuck Close, that she is “more worried about making well-behaved paintings” than potentially offending a critic. She also mentions that within her process she strives to make paintings that are not about what ideas that she already knows, but instead makes something that you look at overtime and that can change throughout the process of looking. This understanding of influence offers a path to whether or not Yuskavage’s figurative paintings can be seen in more of a liberating light than objectifying. Her paintings are not about identity but its first derivative, sex. We don’t recognize ourselves but something close to ourselves. She plays with the sexual urges that we all fell but are too ashamed to fully realize, this dynamic is where some of the angry criticism comes from. Humiliation and fury coexist, as do tenderness and perversion, or familiarity and contempt. The subjects are distorted to the point of cartoonish nonrecognition—which only fuels our desire to hunt for what is recognizable in them.

After considering Lisa Yuskavage’s paintings as an exploration of societal misconceptions you can start to understand her work outside of the veil of oversexualization. The uncomfortably one may feel while gazing upon her paintings is necessary to understand the full scope of what she is trying to express. This may not be something logical and specific, but instead, something subliminal and counter intuitive to one’s initial response. Recalling my original point -- Yuskavage aims to make something that you can see visually, that, overtime changes using this process of observation. Maybe she is suggesting that we as a people are more self-reflective, and use her work to learn a lesson about our own insecurities.

Images:

Lisa Yuskavage, Triptych, 2011, oil on linen, 77x210in.

Bibiliography:

D'Harnoncourt, Anne, and Walter Hopps. "Etant Donnés: 1° La Chute D'eau, 2° Le Gaz D'éclairage: Reflections on a New Work by Marcel Duchamp." Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 64, 1969 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3795242

Hirsch, Faye and Close, Chuck. Liza Yuskavage, Vol. 2, No. 14. Santa Monica: Smart Art Press, 1996

Jenkins, Tamara. “Holy Innocents" Lisa Yuskavage: Small Paintings, 1993-2004. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004.

Siegel, Katy. “Lisa Yuskavage & Katy Siegel: A Conversation” Lisa Yuskavage. New York, Skira Rizzoli Publications,2015

Mukherjee, Siddhartha. Liza Yuskavage. New York: Skira Rizzoli Publications, 2015

YUSKAVAGE, LISA, and Mónica De La Torre. "LISA YUSKAVAGE." BOMB, no. 117 (2011): www.jstor.org/stable/41478849