Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, I’m going to talk to you about another artist who shatters your certainties about contemporary art. Lisa Yuskavage is not a painter that can be comfortably categorized. Her art confronts us with our contradictions, our unacknowledged desires, and our moral judgments with a surgical precision that destabilizes our well-meaning comfort zone.
Yuskavage dares to return to figurative painting with a technical mastery that would make Vermeer pale with envy. Yet, it’s not this virtuosity that disturbs critics so much as what she chooses to represent: women with exaggerated proportions, explicitly sexual postures, inhabiting universes with acid colors that seem straight out of a feverish dream where high culture and popular culture mingle.
These luminous-skinned women, with disproportionate breasts and looks that are sometimes vacant, sometimes confrontational, have led the artist to accusations of misogyny, complicity with the male gaze, or simple gratuitous provocation. But to stop at these hasty judgments would be to miss the troubling complexity of her work. For behind these exposed bodies lies a deep reflection on the female condition, on the mechanisms of desire, and on our ambiguous relationship with the representation of the body.
Yuskavage does not offer us a simple reading. She refuses didactic explanations and explicit political messages. ‘I offer no solution. I do not believe there is one,’ she declared as early as 1992. This ambiguous stance is precisely what gives strength to her work. By refusing to tell us how to interpret these images, she forces us back to our own projections, to our own discomfort in front of these women who, far from being mere passive victims, sometimes seem complicit in their own objectification.
What immediately strikes in Yuskavage’s paintings is their almost supernatural luminosity. The artist masters the sfumato technique inherited from the Renaissance, creating vaporous atmospheres where bodies seem to emanate from the color itself. This technique is not just a simple aesthetic effect: it fully contributes to the meaning of the work by creating a tension between the raw materiality of the bodies represented and their almost ghostly dimension, as if they exist in a space in between, neither fully real nor entirely fantasized.
If we consider Lisa Yuskavage’s work from the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis, we can see a staging of the gaze as drive that constitutes the subject. The female figures she paints are not so much looked at as they look back at us, reflecting our position as voyeurs. It is precisely this reversal that creates discomfort: we thought we were in a position of mastery over these offered bodies, and suddenly these bodies return our own desire and our own guilt.
Jacques Lacan defines the gaze as an ‘objet petit a’ – this concept represents what provokes our desire but remains always out of our reach. The women painted by Yuskavage perfectly illustrate this idea: the more they seem accessible and exposed, the more they remain psychologically inaccessible, thereby creating a permanent tension that characterizes human desire. Their direct gaze, often empty or indifferent, creates an unbridgeable gap between what we believe we see and what looks back at us. As Lacan writes: ‘What fundamentally determines me in the visible is the gaze that is outside. It is through the gaze that I enter the light, and it is from the gaze that I receive its effect.’
This psychoanalytic dimension is found in works such as ‘Rorschach Blot’ (1995), where a blonde woman with spread legs unabashedly exposes her sex to the viewer. This painting effectively functions like a Rorschach test: what we see in it reveals more about us than about the image itself. Some will see gratuitous obscenity, others a feminist critique of objectification, and others still an exploration of female sexuality liberated from moral constraints. Yuskavage does not take sides; she leaves us face to face with our own interpretation, with our own discomfort.
Psychoanalysis teaches us that desire is structured around a fundamental lack. Yuskavage’s hypertrophied bodies, with their impossible proportions and exaggerated postures, materialize this fantasy of a body that would fill this lack. But at the same time, their very artificiality reminds us of the impossibility of this completeness. These women are both too present, too corporeal, and yet elusive, like phantasms that would dissolve if we tried to touch them.
In ‘Night’ (1999-2000), a brunette awakens in dim light to examine her body. This moment of intimacy, where the subject looks at herself, becomes under Yuskavage’s brush an almost theatrical scene where the viewer is placed in an uncomfortable position of voyeur. We are witnesses to a moment that is not meant for us, and yet, the pictorial staging clearly invites us to look. This ambivalence is at the heart of the artist’s work.
While psychoanalysis provides us with tools to understand the dynamics of the gaze in Yuskavage’s work, it also allows us to explore the question of narcissism that runs through her work. Her female characters often appear absorbed in contemplation of themselves that oscillates between auto-eroticism and self-analysis. This narcissism is not necessarily pathological; it can be seen as a form of re-appropriation of the female body, traditionally defined by the male gaze.
By creating female figures who look at themselves with the same intensity that the viewer looks at them, Yuskavage shifts the center of scopophilic power. Narcissism thus becomes a form of resistance, a way to say: ‘I look at myself before you look at me, I define myself before you define me.’ This dimension is particularly present in ‘Day’ (1999-2000), where a blonde woman examines her own body with an almost clinical curiosity.
The term narcissism itself, which refers to the myth of Narcissus falling in love with his own reflection, takes on a new dimension here. Yuskavage’s women are not so much in love with themselves as they are in search of a definition of themselves that escapes the categories imposed by society. Their self-contemplation is a form of self-creation.
This narcissistic dimension becomes even more complicated when we consider the increasing presence of male figures in Yuskavage’s recent works. In paintings such as ‘Hippies’ (2013), men appear as ghostly presences, almost secondary, reversing the pictorial tradition where women were often mere decorative accessories in male-dominated scenes.
These men, often painted in grisaille or in tones less vibrant than the women, seem to exist in another regime of reality. They are there without really being there, like the projections of a feminine desire that would summon them without granting them full presence. This inversion of traditional roles constitutes a subtle form of feminist critique that avoids the pitfalls of didacticism.
In ‘Wine and Cheese’ (2017), a man with rosy tones is embraced from behind by a pale-skinned woman. This work, inspired by both Hans Baldung Grien and found photographs in Viva magazine, perfectly illustrates how Yuskavage blends scholarly references and popular culture to create images that destabilize our expectations.
The psychoanalytic dimension of Yuskavage’s work is also manifested in her representation of what Freud called the ‘castration complex.’ The hyperbolic female bodies she paints, with their disproportionate breasts and exposed vulvas, can be read as a form of anxiety in the face of sexual difference. By exaggerating female sexual characteristics to the absurd, she makes visible the masculine anxiety in the face of what eludes it.
But far from merely reproducing this anxiety, Yuskavage stages it to better deconstruct it. Her women are not passive creatures defined by their lack (as in classical Freudian theory) but active beings who fully inhabit their bodies and sexuality, sometimes to excess. They are not castrated; on the contrary, they are endowed with a sexual power that can be perceived as threatening.
This dimension is particularly evident in ‘The Fuck You Painting’ (2020), where a young woman gives the viewer two middle fingers. This explicitly aggressive gesture breaks with the traditional imagery of the woman as a passive object of male desire. The woman here is not only looked at; she looks back, and her gaze is accusatory, rejecting the voyeur position in which the viewer might find comfort.
If Yuskavage’s work can be read through the prism of psychoanalysis, it also gains by being linked with the literary tradition of the grotesque, theorized notably by Mikhail Bakhtin. The grotesque body is an excessive body, overflowing, that transgresses its own limits. It is a body in becoming, never finished, always in a state of transformation.
Yuskavage’s female bodies, with their impossible proportions and exaggerated postures, perfectly fit into this grotesque aesthetic. They are not idealized bodies as in classical tradition, but bodies that push the norms of femininity as constructed by the male gaze to the absurd.
The grotesque, according to Bakhtin, has a deeply subversive dimension. By showing the body in all its materiality, its carnality, it defies the social conventions that seek to discipline this body. Yuskavage’s women, with their exacerbated sexuality and excessive corporality, embody this subversive dimension of the grotesque.
In her recent works like ‘Triptych’ (2011), Yuskavage further expands her palette by integrating her figures into panoramic landscapes that evoke academic history painting. This almost 5.5-meter-wide triptych presents in the center a woman lying on a bench, legs spread, sex exposed, while in the side panels, peasant-clad women observe the scene with an impassive expression.
This complex work can be read as an allegory of the tension between sexual liberation and moral repression. The peasant-clad women, whom Yuskavage calls her ‘Nel’zahs’ (after the Russian expression meaning ‘Don’t do that!’), represent the forces of censorship and moral judgment that attempt to control female sexuality.
But they can also be seen as part of the feminine psyche itself, that inner voice that judges and condemns our own desires. For as Bakhtin points out, the grotesque is not simply an external representation of otherness but a dimension of our own experience that we attempt to repress.
Yuskavage’s triptych stages this internal tension, this conflictual dialogue between different parts of ourselves. The central woman, with her exposed body, perhaps represents the Freudian id, the seat of drives and desires, while the peasant-clad women could incarnate the superego, the instance of censorship and moral judgment.
This psychoanalytic reading is further reinforced by the artist’s own words, who has stated about her work: ‘I have no interest in pointing fingers elsewhere than at myself, and recounting my own crimes. I am interested in showing how things are rather than how they should be. I exploit what is dangerous and what scares me in myself: misogyny, self-denigration, social aspiration, the eternal aspiration for perfection.’
This ability to explore her own contradictions, to recognize in herself the forces she criticizes, is what gives Yuskavage’s work its psychological depth and emotional power. She does not place herself in a position of moral superiority, but instead descends into the ‘pit’ with her subjects, as she puts it herself.
Literary grotesque, as defined by Bakhtin, is also characterized by its ambivalence: it is both degrading and regenerative, deadly and vital. This ambivalence is fully present in Yuskavage’s work, where the raw representation of sexuality is neither simply celebratory nor merely critical but both at once.
The bodies she paints are both vulnerable and powerful, pathetic and triumphant, objects and subjects. This emotional complexity is what distinguishes her work from mere pornography or simple feminist denunciation. She places us face to face with the fundamental ambiguity of our relationship to the body and desire.
Critic Julia Felsenthal wrote in 2020 in the New York Times about Yuskavage: ‘Another early work, Rorschach Blot (1995), encapsulates her psychosexual approach in a single image: a caricatural blonde, her knees apart, fully revealing her intimacy, which the painter depicts as a sort of obscene exclamation point.’ This description, while reductive, captures something essential in the artist’s work: her ability to transform the female body into a sign that exceeds its simple representation, into an exclamation point that questions and disturbs us.
What Felsenthal does not see, or pretends not to see, is the complexity of the dialogue that Yuskavage establishes with the history of art. Her references are not limited to popular culture and pornography but embrace the entire tradition of Western painting, from Giovanni Bellini to Philip Guston, including Vermeer, Degas, and Vuillard.
This pictorial erudition is not a mere exercise in style or an attempt at legitimization. It fully participates in the meaning of the work, creating a tension between ‘high’ culture and ‘low’ culture, between the sacred and the profane. Yuskavage’s sexualized bodies exist in the same pictorial space as the Renaissance madonnas, creating a visual and conceptual short circuit that forces us to rethink our relationship to these two traditions.
In ‘Night Classes at the Department of Painting Drawing and Sculpture’ (2018-2020), Yuskavage explicitly stages this meta-artistic dimension by depicting an evening art class where students draw a nude model. This work can be seen as a reflection on the academic tradition of the nude, on the way the female body has been used as a pedagogical material in the training of artists.
But by placing this scene at night, in a clandestine context, and introducing an element of explicit desire (one of the students touches the model’s body), Yuskavage reveals what is usually repressed in the discourse on art: the erotic dimension of the artistic gaze.
Western art has long pretended that academic nude has nothing to do with sexual desire, that it is a purely aesthetic contemplation of ideal beauty. Yuskavage tears through this hypocritical veil by showing that the very act of looking at a nude body is always potentially erotic, always driven by desire.
This lucidity regarding the ambiguities of the artistic gaze is what gives her work its critical dimension, much more than any explicit denunciation. She does not tell us what to think about the images she creates, but she forces us to reflect on our own position as viewers, on our own complicity with the power structures that organize the visibility of bodies.
If we consider the evolution of Yuskavage’s work since her beginnings, we observe an interesting movement: starting from an exploration of the female body as a site for projecting male desire, she has progressively integrated male figures into her compositions, creating more complex scenes where power relationships are less unequivocal.
In recent works like ‘The Neighbors’ (2014), where a woman straddles a reclining man, or ‘Sari’ (2015), where a naked man seems to worship a woman standing before him, Yuskavage inverts traditional roles, placing women in positions of dominance or indifference in the face of male desire.
This evolution reflects a continued reflection on the dynamics of power that structure our relationship to the body and desire. Rather than repeating herself, Yuskavage pursues a systematic exploration of the different possible configurations of desire and the gaze, creating works that gain complexity and depth over time.
What stands out in this evolution is how Yuskavage remains true to her artistic vision while constantly renewing it. Her themes, her techniques, her palette remain recognizable, but her perspective broadens, integrating new elements that enrich her reflection without diluting it.
This coherence in change is the hallmark of great artists, those who manage to create a visual universe that is their own while maintaining a constant dialogue with the world around them. Yuskavage is undeniably one of them.
In her recent paintings, Yuskavage has also begun to integrate her own presence as an artist into her compositions. In a small canvas from 2020, she depicts herself painting ‘Night Classes at the Department of Painting Drawing and Sculpture.’ This mise en abyme, where the artist shows herself creating the work we are looking at, adds an additional level of reflexivity to her work.
By depicting herself as the creator of these troubling images, Yuskavage fully assumes her artistic responsibility. She does not hide behind the ambiguity of her work but directly involves herself, placing herself in the uncomfortable position she creates for the viewer.
This autobiographical dimension was already present in her work in a more implicit way. Yuskavage has often spoken about how her personal experience – particularly her work as a nude model during her studies – informed her understanding of the power dynamics involved in the representation of the female body.
But by explicitly representing herself as the artist creating these images, she further complicates our reading of her work. She is no longer just critiquing the male gaze, but also creating images that could themselves be critiqued for perpetuating that gaze. This intellectual honesty, this capacity to question herself, is what gives her work its ethical depth.
The grotesque dimension of Yuskavage’s work, which we have already mentioned, benefits from being related to the literary tradition of the carnavalesque, also theorized by Bakhtin. The carnival, in medieval culture, was the moment when social hierarchies were temporarily suspended, where the people could mock the powerful, where taboos were lifted.
Yuskavage’s art shares with the carnavalesque this ability to temporarily overturn established values, to create a space where what is usually censored can express itself. Her paintings function as visual carnivals where bodies spill over their assigned limits, where sexuality is displayed without shame, where the ‘low’ corporeal takes revenge on the ‘high’ spiritual.
But like the medieval carnival, this space of freedom is ambiguous. It allows for temporary liberation but does not necessarily question long-term power structures. Similarly, Yuskavage’s art offers us a space to confront our desires and anxieties but does not pretend to resolve the contradictions that traverse them.
This carnavalesque dimension perhaps explains why her work elicits such polarized reactions. Those who see it as a simple reproduction of sexist stereotypes miss its subversive dimension, while those who seek a clear feminist message may be disappointed by her refusal of didacticism.
Yuskavage’s strength lies precisely in maintaining this tension, creating images that resist any definitive interpretation. As she herself has declared: ‘I just load the gun,’ she is accustomed to saying to those who insist on seeing a painting as an explanation. This metaphor of the loaded gun is revealing of her conception of art. Yuskavage creates images charged with explosive potential, but it is up to the viewer to decide whether to pull the trigger and in what direction they want to shoot. This empowerment of the viewer is one of the most radical aspects of her work.
By refusing to tell us how to interpret her images, Yuskavage forces us to assume our own ethical position towards them. We cannot hide behind the artist’s intention or an explicit political message. We are alone in front of these exposed bodies, alone with our desire, our embarrassment, our moral judgment.
This ethical demand may be what most clearly distinguishes her work from mere pornography or the advertising imagery that saturates our visual environment. Where the latter offers us images to consume passively, Yuskavage compels us to question our own desire to see, our own complicity with the power structures that organize the visibility of bodies.
In this sense, her work is profoundly political, not because it would convey an explicit message, but because it forces us to become aware of the political dimensions of our own gaze. She reminds us that seeing is never an innocent act, that our gaze is always already caught up in power relations that exceed our individual consciousness. It is this implicit political dimension that makes Yuskavage such an important artist today. Her work offers us a space to reflect on our own relationship to the sexualized images that saturate our times, to become aware of the desires and anxieties they mobilize within us.
Lisa Yuskavage is not an easy artist. Her work does not comfort us in our certainties, does not offer the simple pleasure of beauty or moral outrage. It puts us face to face with our own contradictions, the fundamental ambiguity of our relationship to the body and desire. It is a work that disturbs, that provokes, but never leaves us indifferent.
And it is precisely this ability to pull us out of our comfort zone, to make us look at what we would prefer not to see, that makes her one of the most essential artists of our time. Yuskavage reminds us of the primary vocation of art: to confront us with who we are, in all our troubling complexity.
So, you bunch of snobs, stop searching in her work for validation of your prejudices, whether progressive or conservative. Let yourself be destabilized by these bodies that look at you just as much as you look at them. Accept to be troubled, embarrassed, perhaps even excited. It is in this discomfort, in this zone of unease, that Yuskavage’s art deploys all its transformative power.
For ultimately, what this artist offers us is not a comforting vision of the world or of ourselves, but an invitation to face what we usually prefer to ignore: the dizzying complexity of our desires, the ambivalence of our moral judgments, our own complicity with what we claim to criticize. And perhaps that is the greatest provocation of her work: not her exaggerated breasts or exposed vulvas, but her stubborn refusal to allow us to lie to ourselves.
