It was a sad and tender moment when Margaret Atwood recently gazed out at a packed audience in the Lensic Theater and broke the news that Americans always pretend not to hear. The author was in Santa Fe as part of the Lannan Foundation's Readings and Conversations Series and when Santa Feans wanted to know how her novel,
The Handmaid's Tale
, had been so prescient about a trend within the US toward fascist fundamentalism, she looked at us like lost, dim-witted children. It was an
Oh, you poor dears
expression.
Apologizing for the fact that we'd be hearing it from a Canadian, Atwood explained that despite our fervent American belief that the United States was born from an uncompromising quest for personal liberty and freedom from oppression, the simple fact is that our country is predicated on principles of radical Puritanism. In other words, when Americans wonder how we got here it's because we're forgetting where we came from. This sort of directionless meandering through history is what you get when a culture decides, by and large, to abide foggy calls to war but is aghast at the public appearance of a woman's breast, all the while
maintaining a premise of freedom. It's silly and dangerous and most of the rest of the world knows it.
So does the diligent, disturbing and masterful oil painter Lisa Yuskavage. With just two paintings on view as part the SITE Santa Fe (1606 Paseo de Peralta, 989-1199) biennial, which remains in Santa Fe only until January 9, Yuskavage clearly and deliberately reveals the smoking gun of prudish, American hypocrisy: These are the kinds of paintings-deep, pigment-y stews of melancholy, sexuality, youth and doubt-that leave me vacillating between arousal and despair, entirely and unforgettably uneasy in a punishing and piquant battle between cartoon-y and hyper-real wonder.
At SITE, Yuskavage shares a room with several artists; a quiet space filled, sin hoopla, by the most angsty works in the show. Two nearby pieces by superstar John Currin almost appear to be looking longingly at Yuskavage's work. Bruce Nauman's 1990 video,
Shit in your hat, Head on a chair
, seems to be issuing stern but ineffective commands to Yuskavage's
The Early Years
. And to stare at her
Smiley
, a bright, flower-filled painting from 2003, depicting a young woman steaming up the cusp of taut, nubile sensuality, except for the fact that her face is essentially a "smiley-face"-the universal symbol of bland complicity-is to realize that you've grown up in the wealthiest, most powerful and technologically advanced nation on earth and, no matter how many times you've had it, acted on it, or ignored it, you still don't have a damn clue as to what sexual desire and objectification (and the multi-tendriled accompaniment of dynamics) is all about. Yuskavage, at least, is plumbing those depths. If, like me, you find her to be a brave, curious and important artist, you will be very pleased to come across
Lisa Yuskavage: Small Paintings 1993-2004
, published late last year by Abrams.
Art books, not skinny catalogs, but big, hardbound, weighty books of pictures, are always a treasure, another world to slip into, a story open to any interpretation. But it's a gift to see artists of one's own generation (more or less) begin to earn such tomes. Whether a book is on a Venetian or San Francisco School painter, I've always been able to appreciate it, to love it, but to fully recognize and innately relate to the cultural innuendo and visual jargon that crops up in body after body of an artist's work offers a rare sense of understanding and euphoria. And unlike the familiarity of, say, Damien Hirst's overflowing and bombastic assemblage of pop culture banality, Yuskavage's book, with essay by Tamara Jenkins, is giddy-making and almost eerie in its honesty and intimacy.
Intimacy is, in fact, a key point of the book and the reason for dedicating 160 luscious color plates to the small work of a painter who routinely creates huge canvases. The majority of images are shown at their actual size (just a few inches square) and are what Yuskavage bases her large paintings on. She has found that she is braver with small paintings; they don't sit on the wall of her studio, open to viewing and judgement but can be squirrelled away like the dark, private things they are. So the small works are the rawest expressions of the artist, the pure instinctual imagery that she counts on to provide an avenue to intimacy in her larger projects.
The other intimate aspect is the essay by Jenkins (writer and director of
Slums of Beverly Hills
), a friend of Yuskavage's. The writing, though it takes pains to point out influences from Tintoretto to Diane Arbus, and even convincingly indulges and examines Yuskavage's assertion that Penthouse publisher and photographer Bob Guccione might be considered next to Vermeer, is never academic and has no agenda aside from sharing the artist.
The result is an engrossing depiction of the process of becoming an artist, discovering one's voice and learning to challenge personal and cultural prejudices and fears with that voice. Jenkins and Yuskavage have conspired to include snippets and photographs of the artist's life in a casual manner alongside marginal early paintings that a less-honest artist and more self-indulged personality would never have agreed to. And as a prelude to hundreds of tender, violent, jaw-dropping images by an artist who's not only mastered her own "psychosexual" style, but cares about light and truth and getting the job right just as much as, well, Guccione, Vermeer and Margaret Atwood…that ain't bad.
