On Friday night, a crowd gathered in the Lois Foster Gallery of the Rose Art Museum where the walls were adorned with several oil paintings depicting the female body.The audience was awaiting Mallory Ortberg, a writer and comedian who would review “The Brood,” an exhibition currently on display in the gallery that surveys the most defining creative moments from 25 years of painting by American artist Lisa Yuskavage. 

The program began with an introduction from Betsy Nelson, collections assistant at the Rose. Ortberg is a co-founder, editor and writer of the website The Toast, as well as the creator of the series “Women in Western Art History” and the author of “Texts From Jane Eyre.”

After Nelson officially welcomed Ortberg to the stage, Ortberg began her humorous and entertaining presentation. According to Nelson, Ortberg has never done anything like this before. 

She further explained that this was only her second time in Boston and her second time ever giving a talk. Ortberg had the audience laughing from the very beginning, introducing the presentation by saying “let’s talk about Lisa and eerie female oil paintings!” 

She admitted that she was not an artist, and received a degree in English, though she took one art history class in college and failed it because she “thought the final started at 10 [AM] when it actually started at 9 [AM],” setting a humorous tone for the rest of her talk. Using a slideshow, Ortberg went on to discuss paintings by several artists, exploring the concept of women in art and how “The Brood” connected to this theme. She focused heavily on the depiction of women’s facial expressions in paintings by male artists. 

Ortberg believes that men misinterpret women’s facial expressions, and what men think is a woman’s “active listening” face is actually her “bored” face. She also highlighted the nudity of Yuskavage’s paintings and how it exemplifies a tradition of nude women in paintings. 

Throughout her discussion, Ortberg captured the audience’s attention with her hilarious interpretations of these paintings, using terms such as “casually sultry Lisa Frank color wheel” and “typical art expert museum talking guy.” 

After Ortberg’s presentation, she answered several questions that revealed a glimpse into her background on her experience with art. 

When asked how she became so interested in writing articles about art for her website, not having specialized in it, Ortberg responded that she has rarely let not being an expert in a topic keep her from talking about it. 

Ortberg commented that she had the mentality of “just wanting to do it” and not being afraid of being harshly judged — The Toast as a website is about generating a general enjoyment of all topics. Ortberg further explained, “It’s a place where I feel like a lot of people who may be an expert in one or two fields but also really enjoy lots of others can kind of … throw out jokes or impressions, or ideas that they have of certain things.” 

Ortberg said that she was at first very nervous about reviewing the exhibit, considering how little she knew about art, but at the same time she was excited. 

“I think any time you enter into a field that’s not quite yours, there’s a sense of both a genuine desire not to get something wrong or miss out on something that’s very, very obvious and also a sense of, ‘Gosh, do I have a right to speak about this?’” she told the audience. 

Ortberg loved Yuskavage’s art, which she said helped her to become excited about giving the talk. “[I was] excited that you guys would want this, and it’s a lot of fun, because, as you know, I love making lame jokes about arts and learn some lucky arts,” she exclaimed.