10/19/2006

Lisa Yuskavage

137 comments:

Painter said...

Lisa Yuskavage @
David Zwiner
525 West 19th Street
NYC

heidi said...

When I first heard about Lisa Y in the NY times article, I hated the work. But after seeing it evolve over time, or maybe I'm more adjusted to it, I like how they went from a scathing self hate viewpoint of women as bubbly bubble boobs McGee to a calm women with fruit and pregnant. They feel more self accepting or something. And I like to look at them.
Verdict: interesting.

heidi said...

Wait, what I meant to say was I did not like it initially because I detest art that just shows women's bodies and is sexy, it is too easy and so yawn and just because it is done by a woman does not make it more interesting or complex. Just like a madame in a whorehouse is not pushing feminism versus the pimp daddy on the street corner just because she is a woman and he is not.

But the new ones do not ride on that aesthetic anymore, on a side note: ladies please stop with the using yourself and other women as a sex object for art images just because you think it is more complex and empowered when you as a woman do it, as opposed to Richard Kern --we see right through you!! I'm thinking Alex McQuilkin (pretending to get f**ked while applying lipstick is sooo cool --blech).

Who am I kidding, it's the sweetest ticket to art stardom for a lady nowadays, but it is still gross!

Anyway so I can look at them with a different eye now. I don't feel so manipulated.

arebours said...

I never understood why someone would take cheeze and ick unto their bosom and make a lifes work of mining it,when I first saw this stuff-it holds a frisson,tho,for me,somewhat akin to the movie "Three Women"-(pigs-in-a-blanket)I hate the one color backgrounds,i don't hate the way they make me look for longer than a lot of other work-and def resonate more than jonh currin

arebours said...

in other words,I'd settle for hate-

arebours said...

Altman

jeff said...

I hate to say this but there a hundrdes of better realist painters out there.

She's pretty good painter and devious in her carear chocies(anyone read the NY times article about artist changing galleries, she treated her dealer like shit, no class if you ask me) but I find her work interesting for 5 minutes.

Sven said...

wow you just said an artist treated their "dealer like shit"..
pd your one-offs are really like tourrettes sometime. she left boesky for zwirner and thats wrong WHY?.......

arebours said...

Ther are a lot of seeminglg pathetic women online who cant get fcked-they are perfectley normal ,but in their minds are not-this physchic twist is,I think ,L.Ys provenance,it is a painful and perplexing situation,and I am way more attractive than Ly---

no-where-man said...

haven't seen the show - is this "fertility" or "hot thick chick"?

jpegCritic said...

i heard if you spritz a little scent of
vanilla on your kolinskys...
clove oil in your medium perhaps?

jpegCritic said...

 
 
so i guess it seems only fair to augment
painter's recent set of postings with this
 
 

Dumbpainter said...

It is not about talent or realism or representation...it is about irony. And not too much or too little...otherwise you have Maxfield Parrish fighting R.Crumb...wouldn't that be a combination worth seeing?

Oh, J.currin- nevermind...

kelli said...

I remember really liking Currin and Yuskavage at the time and now I sort of feel like they are a dead end for themselves and other artists. The combination of kitsch and academicism is an impasse but an interesting one. I think Alexis Rockman and Ashley Bickerton on the other hand are not a dead end. I like both Currin and Yuskavage but just feel like they painted themselves into a corner.

jpegCritic said...

Re the corner: Yuskavage more than Currin i humbly believe.

no-where-man said...

i am into it if it is a chunky chick who eats fruit...

if it is a currinnny lemony fruity women thing a la art hitory,


im loseing my edge. the kids are...

zipthwung said...

"shredding through their brains!"

Well now that people are dropping like flies from various ailments - deaths come in threes, fours, 70, 3,000, 600,000 and so on and so forth.

There are a lot of women painting stuff like this but what they are really painting is: their bodies, themselves.

Thats cool. I dont think being a brain in a tank is the answer (see abject formalism) but it does raise the isssue of the subway ads - r-uconnected.com
Apparently the person opposite me is flirting with me, but that seemed a little weird because they came from a different social class, age group and cultural background.

That said, John Baldessari wants you to pay attention to the space between, as does rachel whitread, imho.

Go rip a phone book in half with your mind, man.

jpegCritic said...

oh the fruit... pssssh...
yuskavage should get more into the
vanitas thing. You know, the spoilage,
the stinking flesh, the years after 30,
the painterly poetics of death -- and all that.

We'll see how well she paints then.

And then maybe her talent might be
actually worth dollars thrown oh-too-fashionably
at auction -- She needs a challenge. A corner.

And then what a beautiful corner that might be.

Mt Saint Victoire ... Indeed.

kelli said...

A lot of art historical imagery is pretty filthy. Da Vinci drew his lover as an angel with an erection but in the spirit of scientific inquiry also depicted a cross section of hetero coitus. I'm baffled by the heirarchy where straight men ( Zak Smith, Richard Kern) have no right to make erotic depictions of women, straight women have some marginal right ( while perhaps being male-identified, intermediaries, or madames) and gay women have the most right. Using this logic shouldn't both groups attracted to women ( gay women and straight men) have the least claim while straight women have the most objective gaze? And speaking of identity art Alex McQuilken as an actual young person probably has more claim to making art about youthful angst than the 35 year olds making art about goth like an art world version of Beverly Hills 90210 where nobody ever graduates. I'm a "monstrous hybrid" myself or two-spirited to put it in PC terms. I don't really believe in stable identities. Whatevers Clever.

jpegCritic said...

Problem is,
her paintings aren't even remotely filthy
or transgressive, or ironically challenging.
(The irony lost it's edge from the first
utterance... i.e. 'one-liner' kine)

They're good to look at, though...
I give 'em that. Wouldn't object to
one hanging in my den, that's fer sure.

jpegCritic said...

Richard Kern is a sly one, Kelli.

Hi points at the mechanism of straight
eroticism as well as he creates straight
eroticism using the mechanism with
which he is full aware. I intuit he's more
interested in the pics than the girls.

jpegCritic said...

or rather the mechanism(s).

kelli said...

Good point jpeg. I'd probably rather have a DaVinci drawing. Or a fresco of Priapus from Pompeii. It's hard to compete with the old school, sex and death and whatnot.

Barnaby said...

Kelli..please don't mock me in front of the neighbors...

I can't wait to see 'Kingdom' and 'Painted Things'

jpegCritic said...

oh man.
wouldn't mind a pompeii fresco,
but pls lets not rehash pompeii a la Dashiell
again, cuz...

like it was said about manga in the last string...
nothing cums close to the original.

kelli said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Tatiana said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
jpegCritic said...

all right, tumbleweed, i hear.
So let's say you show me some unhackneyed tits
and in return I'll promise not to complain.

jeff said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
jeff said...

wow you just said an artist treated their "dealer like shit"..
pd your one-offs are really like tourrettes sometime. she left boesky for zwirner and thats wrong WHY?.......

I am baseing this on what I read in a NY times article. If the article got it
wrong than I stand corrected.

The article stated that Yuskavage left her old gallery, who according to the dealer, via a formal e-mail of very few words or even a thank-you for taking her to this point.

Which the dealer found to be rude and hurtful as she was on good terms with her and had really worked hard to make her carreer happen over a 10 year period. It seemed it was not that she left it was how she did it. I mean come on, you can't write a personal letter or at least talk to them, you send a short e-mail?

That's cold, and rude, and shity.
But I really don't give a hoot, I think money corrupts, and it gives people a false sense of self importance.

I'll take my meds for the bloging tourrettes...

Jpeg those male paintings are great.

heidi said...

Well some artists just do it better, like Cecily Brown or Jenny Saville, I'm not against the female form being depicted at all.

Just curious in response to earlier post--what gothy art is being done ?
Damien Hirst maybe?? That's reaching....I don't see too much gothy stuff but maybe I don't categorize it like that. I can think of one or 2, but not a lot more, would be curious to see any info would be good!

Sorry, getting off topic here.

Anonymous said...

In this particular image the fruit gets more attention and is more lovingly conceived. The morphemic female creature doesn't demand the space it takes up (someone's a little bored!). I've played with taking the figure out but it doesn't work either. I would, at first, even the back light uP, bring the fruit forward, (the trickle back is just plain--and is another painting). In the end I'd start again, refocus. It's not impossible to do!
I want this to work, because it's possible!
But there is love! Yet is love enough? Never-the-less we're equipped with the tendons of embrace, just we are in the droll zone of the heliport of yet! We are = reside in the land of the syrupy!

Sven said...

@decay good points @heidi she is referring to banks violette, sue de beer, possibly a few other artists at team, some have grouped David Altmejd with that kind of stuff, even going as far as to label the movement neo-goth (in written criticism) or something..the names not really sticking though.

jeff said...

Ok she made the gallery, and yes don't beleve everything you read, but if that is how it was done its still rude and that's the point, there is no reason to be a an ass.

Great painting????

Velasquez, Rembrandt,Vermeer,Cezanne did great paintings.

This(her work) is not great painting.

Secondly Currin & Yuskavage created the whole figurative movement.

What? where have you been for the last 20 or 30 years, there have been people painting figrutive paintings and doing it much better that these 2.

It's because they are doing it in New York and there work is about getting noticed and sex is that what your baseing your statements on?.

Paula Rego, Jenny Saville,Vincent Desiderio, Steven Assael,William Beckman,Odd Nerdrum,(I am not into all of the painters listed but they have all been around a long time and are doing figrutive work some of which is very strong compeling painting)

Antonio Lopez Garcia has been painting great paintings for the last 40 or more years.

Oh what about Freud.

You see I think this is more about art politics and the how realist and figurative painting is precived in the art world.

To credit them with this is ridiculuos.

youth--less said...

DK, as usual you are at the heart of the matter. One quibble about what you stated--I don't feel she's laughing. LY paintings evoke a soul sickness and sadness and they are relentlessly continuing with that. In some paintings, I think she may have flirted with the notion that the camaraderie of other women might be a way out of the trap. But she really doesnt allow a way out. Her paintings dog me, Ive always hated them. I guess that means they are doing their job.

heidi said...

Thanks cooky blabla I'll look them up, familiar names but can''t place the specific work.....

heidi said...

Thanks cooky blabla I'll look them up, familiar names but can''t place the specific work.....

kelli said...

DK Cooky called me on my snarky comment about DeBeer and Violette both of whom I like. I just think people in their 20's ( McQuilken) get to make unresolved work.
I heard a rumor that Boesky censored Yuskavage's work ( she made a painting for a show with some sort of racial, inflammatory content and Boesky would not show it). If that is true the behaviour is fair. But is it true?

zipthwung said...

Soul sick? I dont see a gestural mark, so I cant tell if shes expressing anything other than calendar days. Cornucopia of trouble. Pandora's box. I dont know Im shallow and dont read.

I dont think an artist is good unless I see blood on the canvas. Real blood.

Artforum is paid for by advertising. Blew my mind. I thought it was like October but with more flair. Caviat emptor. There but for the grace of god go I. Boesky is atoning for her fathers mother's sins. As are we all.

Odd nerdrum reminds me of Frank Frazetta. Why is that?

Again we can compare this to Mark Kostabi, I dont like either, but there you are.

zipthwung said...

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion-year-old carbon,
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.

I mean Im not the target audience, not even in a polysemic ambiguous multivalent polymorphous way. Except maybe the Russ Meyer Angle. The real obtuse one.

SisterBee said...

What are "the perils of believing in them too earnestly?"

zipthwung said...

Oh yeah, this business of inventing a character - I see that a lot in a lot of people, but most adolescents do the goth thing (I think (maybe its just me but I dont think so) neo-goth refers more to the suburban nature of the work (GOthic) vs the house of Dies Dreare's cask of amontalodo sort of dealio) - and we see that also in my favorite paiter du jour - the one with the alter ego.

ALter ego. Now theres a beast to talk about.

Sven said...

to erase repeat comments click the trash icon, you have to be logged in as a blogger to do so. sorry to blow up your spot kelli. ;that opinions been voiced in print though so i dont think theyd take it personally obviously enough

zipthwung said...

Grace hartigan was/has been been championing figurative work in her program for ages.

I talked to one who moved to Chicago and started doing more conceptual work.

Yadda Yadda yadda

youth--less said...

Sister b and DK: I have the option of delusion, and believe me, I take it. Im not too rigourous that way.

Im ready for My Closeuup now, Mr DeMille

zipthwung said...

The fetish thing is interesting - what percentage of collectors are collecting for sexual reasons?

I think Kostabimakes desexualized inert work that is as adolescent as a Nagel (hey eighties!) but conceptual like Dali. In the same way, any work that has a nod to "concept" - the formal device of fruit leading back to the flower pattern in this case - in relation to the pregnant lady -is not any smarter.

But beyond the superficial (magical) surreal - which I think kostabi is asking us to look beyond (Im feelling oh so generous)- is the "message".

So if we say all work of some sophistication (from adults in the art world) has an encoded message (see section two article five of the art code)- then this painting might be about the kink, as mentioned, for pregnant ladies (or was that a snark?) or it might be about how an all fruit diet still makes you fat; eat all you want, exercise less, and still lose weight.

In the same way, kostabi might want us to think about art as a business - one that excludes him because he is not cool - too straight, not kinky enough - not enough damage.
Not just "hey FINE art is a ludicrous enterprise built personality and on status consciousness"
Or maybe just.

THis raises the idea of personality as the deciding factor in taste - not any sort of social darwinism based on smarts, good looks, or being as tall as John Baldesarri.

ALso - issues of art as therapy (tell me the touchstone text so I can continue this thesis).

jeff said...

So when we look at paintings like this we need to remove all art historical reference?

I can't do that as there are to many connections.

"They figured out a way to invent pictures that undercut all the usual ways of evaluating figurative paintings, and yet don't fall into illustration."

I beg to differ both of these painters work look like illustration, but that's OK with me as I like a lot of illustrators.

Yuskavage's work reminds me of Playboy illustration from the 60' and 70's, is that not part of the point of the work?


Tansey, Eric Fischl, Philip Pearlstein are great examples. Fischl is in Mary Boone's gallery so that is not really a "ghetto" it's pretty main stream.

Not sure what is meant by ghettoized anyway.

heidi said...

zipthwung

please continue....don't leave it hanging like that!! Interesting point of persponality as the deciding factor in taste and issues of art as therapy.

The trick is to do it so the onlooker is not keenly aware of that as it is happening.

zipthwung said...

"Yuskavage's work reminds me of Playboy illustration from the 60' and 70's, is that not part of the point of the work?

Which is my point with Nagel, who rose to fame with his Playboy illustrations of women. Illustration.

To which you might say, but Nagel is uncriticly pandering to the lowest common denominator.

I cringe whenever I read a statement written by an art grad at the front desk that uses artspeak like "problematize" and "issues" and "blur" (wooo-hooo!). THese are givens - the equivalent of a handshake protocol or a simple hello in the mainstream language of choice, instead of some subcultural signifier.
I want to feel like I am entering Wonderland or Oz, not the D.M.V. for academic fucktards.

if the work is not problematizing, blurring, shredding, ollieing, gnollying, kick flipping or rail grinding, what is it doing? Being moody? Nursing a boo boo? Peeling a scab?

Lisa Yuskavage might not have any problems whatsoever. But I dont think so. For one, she participates in panel "discussions" that read like group therapy.

Thats cool for everyone but the audience - unless you own a piece and like the sound of the buzz.

Same with Coffee table books written by and for your friends and owners.

Well and online forums, too.

BUt as expressions of ego - or alter ego, art is a narrative based on what we wish people would think, if not who we wish we were, or the exorcism (shamanic therapy), (I want to be an axe murderer who is adored by the intelligentsia and the proletariat alike - Stalin without the paranoia- do I share a birthday with a facist?).

SO to what end the cleverly constructed chrysalis? WHen will the real Lisa Yuskavage spread her gossamer wings? Or is it better to keep the burr in the saddle and the pearls popping? Or is it inescapable irreconcileable, irredeemable, idealistic and ideological?

zipthwung said...

I think I understand. Here's what they have in commmon: they are both magical surrealists. And they both "nod to concepts" so they are dumb.

Painting is dumb, correct.
Can we move on are do we have to mean it?

Pruitt and Early were forgiven for being black, so di Kostabi mean it?

I dont mean anything.

youth--less said...

Wow, you never thot that Yusk & Currin were like Playboy illustrations??! Its Titian to Bougereau to Playboy--direct link. Hello? She also reference 70s greeting card illustration styles. Im sure of it.

zipthwung said...

Well I went through a major corn rowed wigger stage - right after my izod penny loafer preppy stage. Before that I was a Porche driving playboy reading, bear rug sitting reisling/chardonnay (flower, fruit, chocolate, vanilla, fuck structure- screw legs) drinking Coors light crunching hemingway.
Who who who who whooo am I.
Anyone into the Doobie Brothers?

To forgive is divine. TO transgress is sublime. To eat cake and have your toungue turn blue is poetry.

The softcore (Boone sponsored?) Damien Loeb biopic made me problematize everything. Yet again. In a hopperesesque rearview window sort of way. A must see, gay, straight or bicurious.

Kostabi is not ironic? I guess irony just ambiguous sarcasm? I wanst being sarcastic, because when I read kostabis advice(on artnet-no Im not walter robinson) they seem to be straight out of the smug business manual, and I know its not serious, because of the smug tone, but I dont know how I know the tone - tone is weird. There are other terms for the tints and shades of meaning (overtones, metanarratives).

But thats all hi-tone stuff. WHich is where Baldesarri comes in. Space case. That stuff is smart.

Maybe its just me. Im sure it is.

zipthwung said...

Hugh Hefner, Andy Warhol, Greyson Carter and Anna Wintour, among others, have a lot in common.

Lifestyle baby.

You know, HI-FI? Fucking Stereo. Personal walkman? OMG. James Fucking Bond. To have and Have Not. For whom the bell tolls, Death on the installment plan.

Yeah its all cool.

zipthwung said...

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
''Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing..."

zipthwung said...

"Graydon is brilliantly self-invented, pretending to be someone until he became that person."

here

zipthwung said...

chic lit

youth--less said...

http://rustyrust.dreamg8.com/

click on glamour for p'boy stylee

http://www.pinupcartoongallery.com/gallery.html

What if... Dorothy's journey to Oz was a sexual journey, where she unlocked her lovers' doubts of stupidity, heartlessness, and cowardice? What if... that tornado was the metaphorical first orgasm she never, ever forgot— when life explodes into color?

Imagine Alice— yes, Alice of the Wonderland. A perverse little girl to be sure. Her relationship with the Red Queen is a twisted erotic legend for the ages. And how did a talking caterpillar come to be a conversational cock?


Or what about Wendy, from Peter Pan, who followed her "lost boys" into the garden of forbidden delights, including tea-room cruising that may have been lost in the original edition? Someone had to stand up to Captain Hook, even at the expense of her own virtue.

Now imagine all three of these women coming together in their adulthood: Dorothy, Alice, and Wendy— sharing their sexual histories for the first time.

Artists Melinda Gebbie and Alan Moore have done more than imagine it: They've written, and more to the point, illustrated, a three-volume erotic odyssey on the subject, that is so realistic it feels as if you knew the erotic mythology all along in your bones. Welcome to The Lost Girls.

...

youth--less said...

always blaming the french! they all had a hand in it (so to speak) I dont let anyone off the hook

zipthwung said...

odilesque

glad I went to art school.

I'm thinkinking inside the box

Seat of the soul. Wu Li man, master of none.

Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...

There is water under the ocean. Its fucking amazing, looking up like Yeats.

no-where-man said...

Kostabi is not being ironic, i have been on "Ask Mark K" and chatted with him a great deal. That is the amazing part about him. The zero irony, just ask the gong player, or see where they got unfloofed when i miss spelled his name on you-tube.

youth--less said...

Bernini did that swooning St. Teresa, right? I've linked to that before--I dig it. And Snow White. Well, thats always been my favorite fairy tale, cuz my mom was real mean. Imagine Marina Abramovic in the kitchen. Brutal...

Sven said...

Nowhere have you seen the video of him dissing the Guerrilla girls? someone should upload that on youtube.its in a 80s art movie

jpegCritic said...

how 'bout yuskavage to boucher...

the tang to the orange.

you know...

no pulp.

Anonymous said...

I finally made the Yuskavage work. It looks a little like a Donald Judd, not perfect, but I hope you sympathize, I worked hard. I pulled the fruit out. I pulled the figure out! I kept in some proportion attributes.
I pushed all the sentimental stuff out. Sorry, hitherto, it all had to go!

Seems to do the trick!

kelli said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
kelli said...

Speaking of unhackneyed tits Jpeg. Bernini.

http://esculturasantiguas.juegofanatico.cl/images/bernini/ludovica.jpg

hot damn

poppy said...

i think these paintings are funny,
like curran makes funny paintings,..
funny bloaded pear
you makeah-me laugh

jpegCritic said...

dayamm

jpegCritic said...

 
ahem..       Thanks kelli for the moment.         No complaints.         It was great.

So-- whatever happened to Rachel Feinstein?
Always thought she had a better handle on the
brush --     a brush with a sharper point no less.

Yeah i know F's not an offspring of william baily (trained
with the formalistic panache of edge and abstraction)
but she came to mind cuz of currin, obviously, but also
because of boucher, and finally in my wish for a more pointed
exploration of vanitas than what might be intimated above.
(Well, there's also the commonality of the female subject.)

jpegCritic said...

...
of sensuality's relationship with death and beauty's
anchor to the finite. Feinstein's work recalls the irony
that it was not only Marie A. who lost her head
(for sensual excess) ... but also "The Incorruptible" and
ideologically rigourous Robespierre!

(and no i didn't see the movie)
...

jpegCritic said...

and then whatever happened to kaye donachie?
(moving onto asses)

Anonymous said...

yeah tomas, except I don't have much to do with monochrome (remember I'm into dimensions), but, right--bad form. You may have noticed I restored the piece to its capricious self, crimsy-chrome, replete with the blush peach.

kelli said...

yeah Jpeg it was good for me too. What was that? I don't really identify as postfeminist myself.I like the idea of refuting heirarchy but all the old Church comissioned art reamed and twisted it in a way none of us dare to. Somehow great art falls outside of the binary. In the grey netherworld. Who does that Bernini belong to?

kelli said...

They both studied with Bailey at Yale. I see it more in Currin.

Mark Barry said...

Love it, all plump and lusious and bursting. Yumm, pomegranates.

youth--less said...

Let's just say that the Bernini is about repressed sexuality. Let's say suicide bombers are about repressed sexuality. Let's draw restraint. How does Lisa's painting fit into those categories? What does feminism have to do with any of that? Never say never.

youth--less said...

muslim barbie

youth--less said...

Tomas, do you know anything about the catholic religion?

youth--less said...

Just a taste:

Offering of myself as a Victim of Holocaust to God's Merciful Love

O My God! Most Blessed Trinity, I desire to Love You and make You Loved, to work for the glory of Holy Church by saving souls on earth and liberating those suffering in purgatory. I desire to accomplish Your will perfectly and to reach the degree of glory You have prepared for me in Your Kingdom. I desire, in a word, to be a saint, but I feel my helplessness and I beg You, O my God! to be Yourself my Sanctity!

Since You loved me so much as to give me Your only Son as my Savior and my Spouse, the infinite treasures of His merits are mine. I offer them to You with gladness, begging You to look upon me only in the Face of Jesus and in His heart burning with Love.

I offer You, too, all the merits of the saints (in heaven and on earth), their acts of Love, and those of the holy angels. Finally, I offer You, O Blessed Trinity! the Love and merits of the Blessed Virgin, my dear Mother. It is to her I abandon my offering, begging her to present it to You. Her Divine Son, my Beloved Spouse, told us in the days of His mortal life: "Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name he will give it to you!" I am certain, then, that You will grant my desires; I know, O my God! that the more You want to give, the more You make us desire. I feel in my heart immense desires and it is with confidence I ask You to come and take possession of my soul. Ah! I cannot receive Holy Communion as often as I desire, but, Lord, are You not all-powerful?Remain in me as in a tabernacle and never separate Yourself from Your little victim.

I want to console You for the ingratitude of the wicked, and I beg of You to take away my freedom to displease You. If through weakness I sometimes fall, may Your Divine Glance cleanse my soul immediately, consuming all my imperfections like the fire that transforms everything into itself.

I thank You, O my God! for all the graces You have granted me, especially the grace of making me pass through the crucible of suffering. It is with joy I shall contemplate You on the Last Day carrying the sceptre of Your Cross. Since You deigned to give me a share in this very precious Cross, I hope in heaven to resemble You and to see shining in my glorified body the sacred stigmata of Your Passion.

After earth's Exile, I hope to go and enjoy You in the Fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for Your Love alone with the one purpose of pleasing You, consoling Your Sacred Heart, and saving souls who will love You eternally.

In the evening of this life, I shall appear before You with empty hands, for I do not ask You, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is stained in Your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in Your own Justice and to receive from Your Love the eternal possession of Yourself. I want no other Throne, no other Crown but You, my Beloved!

Time is nothing in Your eyes, and a single day is like a thousand years. You can, then, in one instant prepare me to appear before You.

In order to live in one single act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your Love, O my God!

May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear before You, finally cause me to die and may my soul take its flight without any delay into the eternal embrace of Your Merciful Love.

I want, O my Beloved, at each beat of my heart to renew this offering to You an infinite number of times, until the shadows having disappeared I may be able to tell You of my Love in an Eternal Face to Face!

Marie, Francoise, Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, unworthy Carmelite religious.

This 9th day of June, Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, In the year of grace, 1895.

Mark Barry said...

it must be Sunday.

youth--less said...

1595-1895-1995 the catholic church doesnt change. if you were a victim of it, my little victim, you would know.

Of course she looks like she's having an orgasm. Thats the point. Shes a fucking nun. She's not allowed to have an orgasm. She's repressing her sexuality and creating a whole parallel world of being married to Christ and pierced by his love etc. etc.

Bernini helped the Church create a mechanism of control. Oh its all very campy to us now. But its deeply ugly hipocrasy and repression so far as history goes.

kelli said...

Closeup my favorite thing about Western religion is that it fell apart. We are very lucky in a global sense to be living in a somewhat secular post-enlightenment corner of the world. The tortured syncretistic blend that is Catholicism never really cohered and the splintering apart of sex, death,disparate cultural influences and martrydom made the art so complex. The problem I have with Lucian Freud on one hand and Lisa Yuskavage on the other is the one-sidedness. I don't know if I believe in either side or P.O.V. or believe in the buttons that are being pushed..
DK is getting at an interesting point though. Her side is very personal and specific to her. I think it sets her apart from other artists working in the same theoretical framework. The personal shame and embarrassment throws me off guard. It just isn't enough for me though.

kelli said...

I got kicked out of Sunday School for being a bad influence on the other kids when I was eleven and asking questions like "is the trinity monotheistic?" It's actually a legit theological question with some history.
I've always liked the art though and Augustine is still one of my favorites. His angry Manichean influences were kind of punk.

kelli said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
kelli said...

My last post: I think that Bernini sculpture depicts the belief system falling apart and splintering not it's ad campaign, the brazen (not repressed) pagan influence you see in art all over Italy.
Isn't the iconoclastic belief that images and pleasure carry a price itself a Western religious tradition and part of the reason Protestantism never produced a Carravaggio?

youth--less said...

whoops there it goes tomas. good riddance.

I wasnt trying to get at anything in particular--just asking what yall thought. I think LY is about the pain of not being valued. Hers is an outcast sexuality. The personal shame I can understand. The girly stuff I really dont relate to, but I know its out there.

What does an artist really know other than a personal POV. I consider it a priviledge that they attempt to express it to us. An anaylsis of history or a philosphical argument or theory is less valuable to me.

The Muslims have taken over where the catholics left off.

kelli said...

Closeuup don't get me sad. The last few hundred years of historical secular freedom are an anomaly and could disappear. We are after all living through a modern Crusade.
Obama is publically considering running in 2008 now.

hlowe said...

I don't particulary like the faces on Yuskavage's dollies and the face is the most difficult thing to paint in a figure.

Being pregnant is very "fashionable" these days,
if you haven't noticed.

youth--less said...

As my favorite philosopher--ok the orgone accumulator is kooky, but so what--Wilhelm Reich knew...until we acheive an economy and culture that is truely directed by its workers, we will not be free. That is the only progressive Idea. So in that Lisa is saying--stop trying to make me ashamed--she and her painting is progressive. Obama is cool but as GWB and Pete T said--dont get fooled again. he cant save anyone. Save yourself.

zipthwung said...

I was just reading some Kim Levin stuff about how there is no such thing as an innocent eye anymore and there is allways a price to pay for eating of the fruit.

I allways feel like someone is making me watch this stuff, having eaten about six hundred pommegranites.

I also read a mention of Joseph Beuys turning a lecture into a group therapy session.

Welteislehre!

Anonymous said...

If none of the pants fit, I guess it quite easy to move on.
Good luck with your battles on religion. I figure the nonbelievers are just as passionate as the believers--all a dangerous lot!

However, Tomas, please look at Lisa's version and then turn the page and look at mine. The subject matter is intact.

Thanks;)

capricious:
Apt to change suddenly; whimsical; changeable.

crimson:
adj 1: having any of numerous bright or strong colors reminiscent of the color of blood or cherries or tomatoes or rubies [syn: red, reddish, ruddy, blood-red, carmine, cerise, cherry, cherry-red, ruby, ruby-red, scarlet] 2: characterized by violence or bloodshed; "writes of crimson deeds and barbaric days"- Andrea Parke; "fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing"- Thomas Gray; "convulsed with red rage"- Hudson Strode [syn: red, violent] 3: (especially of the face) reddened or suffused with or as if with blood from emotion or exertion; "crimson with fury"; "turned red from exertion"; "with puffy reddened eyes"; "red-faced and violent"; "flushed (or crimson) with embarrassment" [syn: red, reddened, red-faced, flushed] n : a deep and vivid red [syn: ruby, deep red] v : turn red, as if in embarrassment or shame; "The girl blushed when a young man whistled as she walked by" [syn: blush, flush, reddend

blush:
n 1: a rosy color (especially in the cheeks) taken as a sign of good health [syn: bloom, flush, rosiness] 2: sudden reddening of the face (as from embarrassment or guilt or shame or modesty) [syn: flush] v 1: turn red, as if in embarrassment or shame; "The girl blushed when a young man whistled as she walked by" [syn: crimson, flush, redden] 2: become rosy or reddish; "her cheeks blushed in the cold winter air"

peach: n & v
n 1: cultivated in temperate regions [syn: peach tree, Prunus persica] 2: a very attractive or seductive looking woman [syn: smasher, stunner, knockout, beauty, ravisher, sweetheart, lulu, looker, mantrap, dish] 3: downy juicy fruit with sweet yellowish or whitish flesh 4: a shade of pink tinged with yellow [syn: yellowish pink, apricot, salmon pink] v : divulge confidential information or secrets; "Be careful--his secretary talks" [syn: spill the beans, let the cat out of the bag, talk, tattle, blab, babble, sing, babble out, blab out] [ant: keep quiet]

kelli said...

Tomas I thought Bosch belonged to the Adamite sect?
Geek fun fact: the term buggery comes from the Bogomils.

youth--less said...

brent--im a nonbeliever for a very good reason. they tried to force me into believing. Other than that, I believe in a lot of things ;) PS- a lot of people seem to be wearing ill-fitting pants!

Im not into constraint Tomas. I am curious, yellow.

kelli said...

Well there is a tradition of making a distinction between ejaculation and orgasm, coitus reservus for various reasons ( asceticism, worhip of the feminine, conservation of energy, just for kicks). And before the late 1800's we were all just sodomites really.The Adamite thing comes from just a few writers. WTF can I not go to a party without getting into a fight with het guys? The guy last night claimed my gauntlets were submissive attire. I responded "well you came to talk to me and you are kneeling". And I had them made custom.
Last question: how often are political interpretations of art actually closet iconoclasm or puritanical asceticism?

Anonymous said...

dangerous to religion closeuup. I know you are level-headed (strong memories, scars of the harsh, the past, take firm hold of the positive that came out it it). Any belief or train of thought that goes out of its way to hurt or control people, well, how can it be about enlightenment. But there is no reason that you can't turn anything into, at least a personal enlightenment. And if it's got anything in it, it can catch on. The trouble, then...
On a personal note I really don't think it matters what you belief in, If it helps move mountains.

There are naughty gargoyles though, mischief makers, upsetters. You hardly notice how they operate, or when they work! They are part of the great architecture. In the modern, you may notice them as the counter-lever. 恐くない

jpegCritic said...

coitus reservus - isn't that the abridged backstory of
western art? Being that it's not as interesting to note
the degree of which an artist or an artwork expresses
repression as it is to note the quality in which an artist
or artwork might navigate around the waters of repression.

Look, the project of the demonstrative control over the drives,
whether on the spiritual, individual or institutional level --
is the base force that makes the clock tick, or puts the jack
in jackoff, or gives us our pleasure when while looking at
pictures of fckin pomegranites. Sex isn't sex until it's repressed.
Art isn't art until there's a negative force to hold it until it's
release. That's the economy. Good sex needs a little guilt or
shame or taboo, no? But the mastery with which one can
control the language of or repression and it's subsequent release
for an extended period -- well, that's where quality comes to play.

I just find LY as masterful as say a movie poster designer.
or a book cover illustrator. Masterful enough to grab then hold
for a quickie happy ending, but not deeply masterful enough to
deliver the story into fullness.

And unlike the bernini, LY's whole project seems disappointing
by the ease by which one can reduce her work to jingle. Like
the narrations of movie trailers -- having a great capacity
to tease but lacking the substance to tell. '...she's a well-painted
girl... at odds with the world.... and the lusciousness
that confounds her... if only she knew....her true beauty...."
psssh! yada yada. Don't get me wrong, it takes talent to write
copy or paint posters for cirque du soleil, etc.... and all use of
language depends upon repression as force in a psychic economy
of manipulation (coitus reservus), but sometimes hackneyed tits
are just hackneyed tits.

cha said...

So to understand light.. explore darkness first......

jpegCritic said...

i believe that deepness of expression
resides in one's understanding of
dark and light as a range, not an edge.

cha said...

Yes to the range.

And the opposites giving meaning [depth] to each other...

Anonymous said...

Terrible stuff! All that freedom!
http://www.goodshare.org/catacomb.htm

youth--less said...

I think jpeg must be what Lisa is so sad about! OK well. Movin on...

Show me the meaning of the word
Show me the meaning of the word
cause Ive heard so much about it
They say you cant live without it

Welcome to the human race
With its wars, disease and brutality
You with your innocence and grace
Restore some pride and dignity
To a world in decline

Welcome to a special place
In a heart of stone thats cold and grey
You with your angel face
Keep the despair at bay
Send it away, and

Show me the meaning of the word
Show me the meaning of the word
cause Ive heard so much about it
I dont want to live without it
I dont want to live without it
Oh, I want love, I want love, I want love

Welcome here from outer space
The milky way still in your eyes
You found yourself a hopeless case
One seeking perfection on earth
Some kind of rebirth, so

Show me the meaning of the word
Show me the meaning of the word
cause Ive heard so much about it
Dont make me live without it
Dont make me live without it
Oh, love, I want love, I want love, I want love

kelli said...

Think Lisa might be sad about Lisa.
It is better to be feared than loved.

youth--less said...

Thats what my mom thought!

kelli said...

Aw Closeuup sometimes you make me sad. I'm sure your daughter won't say that about you. Buck up.
Machiavelli was such a wierdo, almost as bad as that Laws of Power guy.

youth--less said...

All these paintings come down to beating hearts kel. Thats my point. Personal is political and all that. I never beat my daughter so I broke that chain, and that is the best thing I ever did in my life. That and feeding her whole grain bread ;)

kelli said...

Sometimes history changes for the better, personal or political. Looking forward to the upcoming elections. Time will tell.

youth--less said...

What I was reading there in jpegs post was the underlying acceptance of violence. Maybe the expectation that people who dont violently act out should still accept violence or excuse it, because if they dont, there wont be good sex. Perhaps that's not what jpeg means, but people who have experienced real violence-- physical, mental, social, political--they have an interesting perspective on that. I got that out of the Angela Fraleigh painting a while back as well.

kelli said...

I think of Bernini more in terms of death drive than violence ( he's on the cover of my copy of Bataille's Erotism). Old art is often more interesting because of the subtext and a lot of contemporary art is just text. I guess Lacan thought all art was sublimated or repressed sexuality but some of us want more from art than repression: we want it to drag the issues into the light of day and examine them.
Maybe we won't always like what we see.
Still I also want (female) artists to do more than flip the script, Yuskavage or Fraleigh. But it's hard to escape the script.

jpegCritic said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
jpegCritic said...

just a quickie response -- closeuup, first i am sorry you took
offense to what I wrote -- especially in light of the possibility
that all froms of abstraction or mediums of representation --
whether writing or painting -- is ultimately staged upon the
framework of human ethical values... and could therefore be judged
by that framework.... Though i consider myself an ethical person,
it is not something that I usually ask of art (though I ususally
feel the opposite of popular commercial art) I usually vie for its
autonomy from the ethical sphere (except in extreme cases, where
art truly threatens real violence).

That said, I think kelli is closer to what I was discussing -- not
violence, but the operation of the death drive. For me, I was
taking Lacan, but Otto Rank as well (Rank's association of the
death drive with the wish-for-immortality -- the recreation of
ourselves as effigies -- within which structures, we might find
the fissures of lacanian jouissance, or ecstasy). But fissures
can't happen if there is nothing to fissure. Didn't really feell
like discuss it using these terms, so of course I chose a
roundabout way.

I believe that good art happens along our fissures, and so does
interpretation. And we're all entitled to both.

zipthwung said...

Ethic are for nerds. I have a cactus. Its spiralling nicely, like a football. Go Jets.

zipthwung said...

Oh an weho the fuck is paris hilton? Does she make art?

jpegCritic said...

ha, verdurin!
guess you might be too young
to remember Gingrich in his brief reign of terror...
Oh what a cactus-ridden ethically convoluted garden it was!

jpegCritic said...

and hey-ll, z...
im jus tryin' keep whuts rye-teous, rye-teous..
why caint we all git-along?

jpegCritic said...

oh what about those guys k-i-s-s-i-n-g..

...on the flight from france? rights of man, indeed!

kelli said...

I'm just barely old enough to remember:
-Reagan and the early days of the AIDS crisis when the administration considered quarantine of (gay male)patients
-the unholy alliance of the Meese commission and antipornography feminists
2 reasons I'm usually wary of feminism based on a binary system of gender and/or moralistic interpretations of imagery

Gingrich was the acid reflux

jpegCritic said...

i-o-c-c-ol-a-s-t!     (caint spel, i know, but hey, i'm on a blog!)

jpegCritic said...

... but my apology to closuup stands. I'm all for
respecting differing viewpoints... as long
as I get my drunken say.

kelli said...

I said before I kept getting into ideological arguments with Closeuup before realizing that she responds to images in a different way and images that offend her are almost like being slapped in the face. I have to respect that. Looking at art is almost entirely analytical for me. But look at it this way if the lows are lower maybe the highs are higher and Closeuup might enjoy some paintings in a way I don't.
I think this thread and Closeuup gave Yuskavage a fair shake.

jpegCritic said...

righteous, kelli.
righteous, closuup.
zip, more beers, wouldn't you say.

jpegCritic said...

oh and verdurin, you're invited
for beers but i barley know you.
[sic]

youth--less said...

well u know kelli--they were raped. I mean have some fucking compasion--and understand that all your bravado is nothing more. By conflating Reagan/Meese and anti porn feminists you are just being stupid. And condescending as always. McKinnon and Dworkin were very radical thinkers. I dont really agree with them in the end, but they had something very important to say. Im glad they said it.

jpegCritic said...

whoah.

kelli said...

Closeup I am one of the very few people I know who has actually bothered to read Dworkin. I genuinely admire her early work, her position against biological determinism , her personal relationship ( whatever the details may have been, that's private) with a gay man, her antiwar activism....and then I also have compassion for her suffering and then she fell in with a bad crowd, people like MacKinnon who I have absolutely nothing positive to say about.I'm certainly not saying anything Pat(rick) Califia and others have not already said. I don't want to conflate Dworkin and MacKinnon. They were originally very different. Dworkin wrote about being taunted by other feminists for her views. At some point she was a very unique and original voice before being fenced into a position.
Not looking for or willing to accept any fences of my own.
It doesn't work that way. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

kelli said...

And aside from lumping the two together I agree with pretty much everything Califia has to say on the issue. I'm glad he ( at the time she) said it.

youth--less said...

The point is that you lumped them with Reagan/Meese which is dishonest.

kelli said...

No it isn't. You know the history as well as I do. I will post a link. And a link for Dworkin as well in case people don't know her early work.

youth--less said...

To paraphrase Kanye: Reagan/Meese didnt care about women. Dworkin did. That's why I wont buy your conflation.

kelli said...

And here it is:
This is how Dworkin started:
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIID.html
"all my life I have hated the proscribers those who enforce sexual conformity"

And this is what they made her:
http://www.lrp-cofi.org/PR/pornPR27.html
that's a pretty decent account of the history.
"when Jerry Falwell starts saying there is real harm in pornography then that is valuable to me"

so yeah no thanks

youth--less said...

They tried to save womens lives. So yeah no thanks? That says it all Kelli. Nite.

kelli said...

Speaking freely artistically and otherwise is life.

http://www.mediacoalition.org/reports/mackinnon.html

Adrienne Rich and others fought this fight so that I won't have to.
But I remember it.

jpegCritic said...

and all is full of love.

kelli said...

I'll still take the beer Jpeg.

jpegCritic said...

barkeep!

jpegCritic said...

Oh what a cactus-ridden ethically convoluted garden it was.

zipthwung said...

I believe that was discussed earlier vie relation to Playboy, the lineage of that sort of kitch and the "greeting card" quality of this image.

Not sure I would read all the sex stuff into it, being a formalist and all, but the narrative element cannot be denied.

Are women just fruit? Its an interesting question.

Anyone who paints is ambivalent on some level.

Anonymous said...

very nice work. i like the transitions of warm colors that she uses, her prints are also nice even though they are images directly from other paintings.