This week I looked up Lisa Yuskavage. This artist works in oil on linen, making highly sexualized female nudes. The figures she paints are highly artistic and are exaggerated usually in a sexually appealing way. The artist's use of color is unrealistic and stands out from other figures. The most apparent part of these paintings though is the confrontational sexuality that is portrayed. According to various art dealers, museums and articles, some consider the work to be no more than kitschy soft-porn, while others see the work as strong feminism. I don't really care which is the artists intention, and am rather annoyed about the way I saw this theory discussed. I cannot attribute confrontational sexuality in a female nude as feminist. The theory of that seems to rely on a double standard of voyeurism. This is a matter of female portrayal in media and no one seems to know if it is helpful or hurtful to the equal rights of women. I can't give that argument too much credit as it seems that people are more interested in making the artist more politically involved than she appears to be. In this article, they say that Lisa said the work was a personal exploration of what she hated, and her sexuality. I'll give that more credit. If a person has an opinion or a context in which they see a piece, that's perfectly fine, but it seems in this case that the noise of what people want to see in her work is overpowering the work itself. I could only find the work itself in the context of sales as well. It is being marketed this way, and though I'm glad the artist is successful, I don't like seeing this much commerce based on vogue popularity and blind speculation. The art itself has merit. It is skillfully crafted and both confronts and entices the viewer. The audience of artists critiquing it just cannot seem to make up their minds.
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