Self Portrait 2017

Curator: Lisa Yuskavage’s "Self Portrait," created in 2017 with acrylic paint, immediately strikes me as a powerful assertion of female identity, yet tinged with unease. The vibrant red palette and unconventional composition evoke a space that’s both alluring and unsettling. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: The material density, the facture of those brushstrokes, yes, it’s very evocative. Looking at the surface alone, one can almost grasp the physical labor that produced this, but what of that strange palette, which feels manufactured? Is this an ironic commentary on the production of erotic imagery, even self-representation? Curator: It certainly reads as a deconstruction. Yuskavage subverts traditional portraiture conventions. Notice how the female figure is presented—vulnerable yet assertive. She stands, nude save for a corset and mismatched stockings, on a drum-like pedestal. Is this presentation exposing the artistic gaze, transforming the artist and her image into an object of scrutiny, laid bare within a marketplace? Editor: Indeed, her placement and garb reframe not just classical ideals of beauty but perhaps hint at commodification within the art world itself. The foliage obstructing the artist's painting feels like an imposed, constructed boundary, even a metaphor for controlling distribution or marketing of the "finished" art, in this case, the image of her. Also, why those particular stockings: their materiality of, perhaps nylon, points at a social hierarchy where erotic art or the female figure has been marketed for consumer society? Curator: Precisely, those garish colors! There’s almost a defiant flaunting of the constructed nature of femininity. The shadows in the background and obscured face add a dream-like distortion and perhaps a personal comment on art and beauty. I sense a powerful blend of vulnerability and self-awareness here. What strikes you most about the painting's relation to Yuskavage's broader oeuvre? Editor: The eroticized nude figures become raw material with her production process, reconfigured in an unseemly presentation that, for me, is a powerful comment on commodification in art. This act elevates, critiques, and perhaps even cheapens the creative output. Her body rendered with paint as the prime medium feels especially brave. It has me rethinking notions of authorship and ownership of one’s self-image within current art making.