Reclining Nude 2009

Curator: This is Lisa Yuskavage’s "Reclining Nude," painted in 2009. It's an acrylic on canvas. What are your first impressions? Editor: There’s an odd softness, a certain vulnerability underscored by those slightly absurd striped stockings. It feels…lush but also a bit melancholic. Curator: The composition certainly emphasizes that tension. The pose itself, a classic reclining nude, is almost overwhelmed by the encroaching landscape. The grass is both protective and a little threatening. The light seems to both reveal and obscure the figure. Editor: That landscape context is doing heavy lifting, isn’t it? How does Yuskavage’s presentation here, seemingly both complicit and confrontational, play into or subvert conventions within the genre of nude paintings and contemporary expectations for how women are depicted? Curator: I would argue she’s deliberately challenging those expectations through the very form itself. Consider her use of color – these cloying greens that borders on saccharine – alongside the distortion of the body, specifically that unnervingly airbrushed skin and averted gaze. Editor: Interesting…Almost an evasion, an attempt at destabilizing that conventional power dynamic in this contemporary work? The shadowy figure further back complicates it even further, some other representation of childhood innocence lost. Curator: Precisely. It underscores a certain ambiguity. Is this a rediscovering of innocence or some corruption of it? This kind of formal dissonance becomes central to the image’s effect. She juxtaposes these softer elements with what might read as almost an overdetermined sexuality. The entire image functions as a kind of unstable symbol. Editor: Right. The nude itself, presented almost like a found object within this strange pastoral scene, invites questioning on several levels. Ultimately what Yuskavage does in subverting painting strategies provides an art historically rich yet challenging perspective. Curator: It’s precisely through those dissonances that Yuskavage manages to create this unsettling yet captivating viewing experience.