Wine and Cheese 2017

Editor: Here we have Lisa Yuskavage’s 2017 oil painting, "Wine and Cheese". What immediately strikes me is the almost dreamlike, hazy quality to the figures. There's an intimacy, yet it feels distant, somehow unsettling. What's your interpretation? Curator: Unsettling is spot on. It's like witnessing a private moment that we're not quite supposed to see, isn't it? The pallid skin tones and the blurring of the figures – it's as if the artist is inviting us to ponder the idealized versus the real. And “Wine and Cheese,” a loaded title! Does it represent simple pleasure, something earned? Are these bodies beautiful, or slightly…off? What do you make of the almost jarring realism mixed with such a painterly ethereal quality? Editor: I think the title invites us to consider our own assumptions about pleasure and indulgence. There is something unsettling in the flesh tones and lack of details of the woman. Maybe that’s part of what creates a disturbing, surreal quality? Curator: Exactly! She presents the traditionally "beautiful" things – a domestic scene, wine, the nude form – then twists them just so, pushing us to question our own notions of desire, intimacy, even good taste! I mean, it feels very contemporary, like a filter we didn't ask for on our perceptions, doesn’t it? Editor: It definitely does! I hadn’t considered how subversive that could be, framing the familiar in such an… unfamiliar way. I think I appreciate the painting a lot more now! Curator: And maybe, just maybe, she's winking at us, urging us to embrace the slightly off-kilter beauty in the world around us, eh?