Lisa Yuskavage

Lisa Yuskavage is best known as the creator of female figures whose outrageous proportions evoke Edgar Degas nudes posed by Hans Bellmer. Her polarizing work has been variously described as "perversely pledged to vulgarity," "discomfitingly kitschy," and "utterly sincere." Critics and curators have likened walking into a Yuskavage show to "falling into a candy-colored fever dream" and tell of emerging with the sensation of having eaten too much cake.

"Painters have to create space for themselves," says Yuskavage, who has staked out her territory with pictures that pack a one-two punch of titillating, often-bizarre imagery and dazzling technical prowess. Whether blithely sucking on a lollipop or splayed on a table in a nod to the through-the-peephole tableau of Marcel Duchamp's Etant donnes, the compositions' figures also seem content to be "over here by myself."

In a pivotal artistic decision Yuskavage turned her women around to face the viewer, mined her subconscious for disturbing scenarios, and began experimenting with what she describes as "kinky sfumatos," redeploying her arsenal of representational painting techniques in the service of subversion.

"The only things we tend to feel really comfortable with are the things that we already know," says Yuskavage. "I remember seeing Philip Guston's late paintings and having that wonderful feeling of hatred toward them and then becoming a maniac fan." It's a reaction she learned to trust. "If something is so offensive or makes you feel like there's something off, maybe there's something to it." Her latest works, most of them created on a grand scale, are the result of snowballing associations. "I would begin with something random that I found or had in mind, or a piece of a painting I had made a long time ago — some small thing — and then build on that, associate from that, and just keep adding to it,"

Comments

[PatarNoster]

Real nice, its the colours that really make it original

Patar Nosters Art

[CW]

I agree