The greatest advantage to a blog is that I can write about a show I haven’t seen and don’t intend to see (I’ll use my broken foot, now mending nicely, thank you, as an excuse, although I’ve probably seen all the Lisa Yuskavage paintings I need to in one lifetime). But I will use it as an opportunity to rail against the idea that an artist’s gender, or his/her intention or surmised intention, political or otherwise, has anything to do with the aesthetic value of a work of art. What if we suddenly found out that all of Yuskavage’s paintings had been done by Russ Meyer? Or the seven dwarfs? What if they weren’t on exhibition at David Zwirner, but some of the “unique images” offered by Arcadia Fine Arts? What if Yuskavage had been trained, not at Yale, but by a Bob Ross certified instructor? What would that change, really?

I found a Washington Post interview from 2007 that delineates thought pro and con about Yuskavage, and then this, from Jerry Saltz’s latest piece in New York:

The same bogus arguments come up every time there’s a Lisa Yuskavage show. Is her work feminist? Is she, oy, “critiquing the male gaze?” At the opening of Yuskavage’s current solo outing, I was standing between two paintings: Figure in Interior, a picture of an anorexic nude on her knees with her legs akimbo, shaved vulva exposed, white cream/semen dripping from her face onto her breasts; and Reclining Nude, a picture of a recumbent girl in a glowing green glen, her breasts pointing in two directions, legs splayed to expose pink genitalia protruding from blonde pubic hair. A well-known museum curator sidled up and swooned, “Lisa’s paintings are as rich as Vermeer’s and Boucher’s. They’re as sumptuous as the background of the Mona Lisa.” I blinked silently until she mentioned Courbet. Then I bitchily snipped, “If you think these paintings have that kind of mojo, you’ve either never looked at those paintings or you know nothing about painting—which I’ve written about you.” We smiled at each other and parted. I love the art world.

While I don’t necessarily draw the same conclusions as Saltz about what is important now, we agree, that with the social and economic changes of the last few months, the era of forced cynicism, as evidenced by Murakami, Hirst, Koons, Prince and others, including Yuskavage (and perhaps Currin), may have come to a close. It’s not enough to make work that comments on art; we want the real thing.