In some ways, filmmaker Sofia Coppola and painter Lisa Yuskavage are an odd match. Yuskavage proudly hails from a working-class family in a hardscrabble Philadelphia neighborhood, while Coppola is… a Coppola. But what they have in common (in addition to Irish and Italian ancestry) is an abiding interest in feminine jouissance—audience expectations be damned. (When Yuskavage debuted her candy-colored paintings of perky-breasted women in the 1990s, a critic described them as “visual stink bombs.”)

It’s not surprising, then, that both artists quickly understood what the other was up to. The two have been friends for decades, constantly circling one another in New York’s creative scenes. They have both spent their careers making art inflected by girlhood, a preoccupation that some have mistaken for superficiality. Both work in media—film and painting—that have historically been dominated by the male gaze. But over the past 30 years, their refusal to conform to a palatable style and subject matter has given them staying power in a culture more inclined to gobble up female artists and discard them.

This fall, Coppola revisits Marie Antoinette, one of her unevenly-reviewed-turned-fan-favorite films, on its 20th anniversary. An exhibition at the Petit Trianon at the Château de Versailles (on view through January 2027) brings together collages, costumes, and other elements of the creative process, while a documentary chronicling the shoot, directed by her late mother, Eleanor Coppola, was picked up by Mubi. For her Cult of Personality issue cover story, the director sat down with Yuskavage to discuss making art that people love to hate—until they can’t help but fall in love.