Sharon Mizota is a Los Angeles-based art critic and writer whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Wired.com, ARTnews and other publications. She is a co-author of Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes: Conversations in Asian American Art.
Anita Ragusa's paintings look like the work of two different artists. One series features faux naïve renderings of baroque interiors peopled by pallid, disaffected women; the other, lyrical compositions of nubile young men entwined with flowers. While it's not unusual for artists to work in different manners, the wide disparity between Ragusa's two bodies of work disrupts the notion of a signature style. More intriguingly, she uses this gap to comment on representations of gender.
Unsettling and claustrophobic, her portraits of women are noxious compositions of cerulean blue, forest green and acrid yellow thickly applied with a wavering hand. In "UES," a well-dressed pregnant woman stands unsmiling, one hand draped across her belly. The reclining figure in "Palm," legs splayed across an over-stuffed divan, makes the same gesture: at once self-protective and worrisome.
By contrast, Ragusa's paintings of men are light and flatly decorative. Confident swirls of pink, mossy green and brown form curvaceous flowers cavorting across slender, hairless bodies. Recalling early 20th century Art Nouveau depictions equating women and nature, these images "flip the script," applying the convention to male bodies.
This "feminine" beauty is a nice twist, but the works can just as easily be read as a highly aesthetic species of beefcake. In their ugliness and anxiety, the images of women are more complex. Or perhaps they only seem so, given our equation of angst with emotional depth. Whatever the reading, Ragusa's works suggest that while art may be nothing but style, style makes all the difference.
