Flora Yukhnovich
b. Norwich, England, 1990
Lipstick, Lip Gloss, Hickeys Too
2022
Oil on linen
Gift of Iris and Adam Singer, in honor of the Hirshhorn’s 50th anniversary, 2023 (2023.011)
About Museums Without Men
Celebrated art historian Katy Hessel has launched an audio guide series highlighting the women and gender-nonconforming artists in the public collections of international museums. Museums Without Men is an ever-growing series that introduces museum visitors to underrepresented and often lesser-known artists, opening up collections to new and existing audiences who will be able to follow the audio stops while in the galleries or online. The series links public institutions globally, including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Hepworth Wakefield, UK; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; and Tate Britain, London, to foreground the important work that museums and galleries do by collecting and displaying women and gender-nonconforming artists, whether historical or contemporary.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Flora Yuknovich, Lipstick, Lip Gloss, Hickeys Too (2022). Flora Yuknovich is a master when it comes to paint. Stretching, splattering, and lathering it on her canvases, she creates a whole world of textures that allow our eyes to dance around the surface, building scenes that fluctuate between movement and stillness.
In the foreground, we might see buttery, creamy textures. Up at the top, these dramatically shift to becoming thick, sometimes watery, industrial sized strokes, evoking trees, or a stormy sky, or a cluster of birds swarming in the background. Yukhnovich draws from 17th and 18th century French painting, notably the Rococo style, with its outdoor parkland scenes and soft rosy palettes. Many of her images, or elements of them, are based on the works of historical [00:01:00] male artists, and her focus on Rococo is intentional. Rococo was a style that was seen to be steeped in frivolity and sumptuousness, the opposite of formal academic history painting.
And Rococo declined in fashion due to its association with femininity. Recently though, as we see in this painting, titled Lipstick, Lip Gloss, Hickeys Too, Yukhnovich has developed an interest in the link between watery landscapes and women’s bodies. Something that stems from her deep fascination with the myth of Venus’ birth.
This is a story that saw the Greek god of time, Cronus, overthrow his father, Uranus. While doing so, he castrated Uranus, whose genitals landed in the sea. This caused the water to fertilize, and Venus, god of love and sex, was born, fully formed, out of the foaming water. This image is [00:02:00] often depicted in art history.
But Yuknowich’s version gets us to think further about the connection between eroticism, water, and women. As well as being imbued with historical references, Yuknowich’s painting equally looks to pop culture today. The title of this work, Lipstick, Lip Gloss, Hickeys Too, is a lyric from Kiss Me More by Doja Cat.
Because as if to bring the myth to the contemporary, Doja Cat dresses up as Venus in the video for this track and emerges out of her scalloped shell. Yukhnovich and Doja Cat are both reclaiming this goddess who was so often portrayed by men.
