Lisa Yuskavage: 'People take me too seriously'

Lisa Yuskavage gave a talk yesterday at the New School for the Public Art Fund. She showed slides of her work since college and how her work evolved from somehwat precious, quiet paintings about light to big, outrageous canvases of caricatured naked women. She talked about the breakthrough moment when she had her first New York show in 1990 and actually hated the work she put up. "I remember thinking 'oh my god my work sucks'," she said. She took a year off from painting but came back with the kinds of canvases she's so well known for now.

She talked about how her breakthrough involved thinking of herself as the master of the figures she created, and how she took great pleasure in being cruel to them. She likened her new painting style to Dennis Hopper's gas-snorting sadist in the movie "Blue Velvet." Here are some of the choice quotes from her talk.

"It was as if I switched places, now I was the top and painting was the bottom"

On not understanding when people talk about her "technique": "Every way I start a painting is different and every way I end a painting is different."

"I couldn't stand painting from life ... I needed to make stuff up."

On Modernist teachers: "Make it flat? I didn't even know how to make it spatial... I was really curious about rendering ... It felt kinky and perverse to render."

After making all these kinky paintings from models, she asked "When are you going to paint yourself, coward?" Instead of painting herself, she did the next best thing: she solicited a woman who looked like her to pose for paintings.

"I got glasses" (on why work she did in Rome was so different)

On Renaissance sculptures: "They were always about one figure being abused by another."

On people thinking her paintings of two naked women is about lesbianism: "Whatever."

On reading Itten and Goethe: "The Germans are really good on color"

"Fiction is always what it is ... That's the important thing to remember about painting. It's always about the painting."

When someone asked her about John Currin, she seemed amused at the rivalry that people assume exists and said that they're friends. "He's an incredible artist and a wonderful person."

On reading criticism: "If it's bad, first you cry. Then you say 'fuck it' ... As long as they spell my name right."

"Ok, you hate my paintings. I need to do these paintings to breathe... I know what it's like to make paintings I hated and I almost died."

On agreeing with conservative critics, specifically Hilton Kramer's broad points about the art world: "Then when he offers the alternative, it's so bad."