Re-introducing the figurative into the contemporary painting starting from the tawdriness of today’s life determined and deeply imbued with mass media and the psycho-social realm of the individual, Lisa Yuskavage has developed a distinctive approach and her own genre of female nude. Her lavish, erotic, and cartoonish characters, placed in fantastical landscapes or scenic interior narcissistically contemplate themselves and their bodies, tempting the viewer’s imagination. Using the traditional oil painting and historical themes as the background base for the wild inventions and liberal imagination, Yuskavage is recognized as a feminist painter who explores social identities and conventions through depictions of women’s bodies, strong in their frank sensuality.
Yuskavage was born in 1962 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she studied the Tyler School of Art at Temple University spending one year in Rome through the school’s program. After that, she received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 1986[1]. Developing the style since the early 1990’s, her work is characterized by often nude, angelic but provocative young women represented in the partly fictional blurred surrounding. Re-entering the figurative into the contemporary painting, her complex, loaded with tension narratives reveals themselves slowly in front of the viewer. Encompassing various genres, from still life and landscape to portrait and nude, the artist applies techniques ingrained in Renaissance, but also in modern approaches as the Color Field Painting, finding diverse inspiration from artists like Giovanni Bellini, Johannes Vermeer, or Edgar Degas. Having the mixed reactions, the critics respond to her paintings with diverse interpretations, from explanations that include terms like alienation and affection, vulgarity or self-loathing to associations with psychologically encouraged theories of viewing, particularly the one of a gaze. Still, they are right about one thing: her complex narratives and perplexed content enveloped in an air of mysticism surely deny singular interpretation.
His first solo show, held at Pamela Auchincloss Gallery in New York was a culmination of her student ideas and although achieved commercial success, the artist hated it so badly that she stopped painting for one year. She felt like she attended the exhibition of a person she was pretending to be and not the real her, a girl from a working-class family who had a lot of crazy energy that she obviously didn’t know how to transfer into the paintings. Considering art as something for the “classy” people, Yuskavage tried to be one of them, facing the truth on that show when she comprehended herself as a fraud. She spent next year just walking around SoHo, looking at art, visiting film festivals and reading at the New York Public Library. Although depressed and convinced in an idea of wasting her own time, she was actually building the basis for her future profession, discovering who she really was.
As a symbol of her rebel character of a tough girl, Yuskavage chose to paint women putting her unusual subject matter as the opposite to her education reflected in Caravaggio’s lighting by the hidden light sources, Raphael’s Renaissance theories about perspective and Van Gogh’s and Philip Guston’s cartoonish figures. Already determined as a feminist painter, she suddenly decided to consider male subjects, creating the series of tall and skinny men in classic contrapposto postures, for the first time exhibited in New York in 2015. Noticing the lack of Christian iconography in contemporary art, Yuskavage made a decision a long time ago that if she ever paints man, that would be Jesus and his friends. Keeping her promise, she made Dude Looks Like Jesus, painted nude, staring at the viewer, while Dude of Sorrows, represented in close-up, has curly hair resembling halo and bruise on his eye. Focusing on single subjects and neutral spaces in her early pieces, her more recent body of work has more layers, characterized by a richer complexity. Starting with a monochrome palette and various hues of one color and connecting it to a mono-figure, she completely changed the approach[2]. Also, work from the early 1990’s was entirely fictional and imagined without any sources, but only from her everyday life. Eventually, she realized that imagination wasn’t enough, employing the real porn and later real people, like her friend Kathy as an embodiment of the girls who lived only in her head until then. It’s long past the time when people wondered if Lisa Yuskavage’s paintings should be hidden or hung up on the museum walls. Always drawing a lot of attention, her New York show (2015) was sold out even before the opening, while one of her pieces reached the price of more than $1 million.
Yuskavage’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows worldwide, at numerous prominent institutions and galleries such as David Zwirner, New York (2015, 2011, 2009, and 2006), Greengrassi, London (2013, 2010, 2007, 2004, 2002, and 1999), The Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin (2011), Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2006), Royal Academy of Arts, London (2002), Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2001), and the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2000). It is also included in the museum collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, MoMA New York, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, among the others. Her great solo show that spanned twenty-five years of her artistic career has been held at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in 2016, followed by publication by Skira Rizzoli[3]. The significance of her oeuvre and her attribution to the contemporary art scene was confirmed several times by notable awards and honors, including the Temple University Gallery of Success Award (2005); Founder’s Day Certificate of Honor, Tyler School of Art, Temple University (2000), The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (1995), MacDowell Colony Fellowship (1994), and the Zimtbaum Foundation Fellowship, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Massachusetts (1986).
The artist is represented by David Zwirner Gallery.
References:
Featured image: Lisa Yuskavage – Artist’s portrait, 2014 – Image via artisproject.metmuseum.org
Year | Name of the exhibition | Museum/Gallery | Solo/Group |
---|---|---|---|
2016 | Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood | Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Saint Louis, MO | solo |
2015 | The Brood (upcoming) | The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Waltham Massachusetts | solo |
2015 | Nude (upcoming) | Gemeente Museum, The Hague | group |
2015 | Lisa Yuskavage (upcoming) | David Zwirner, New York | solo |
2015 | Queensize - Female Artists from the Olbricht Collection (upcoming) | me Collectors Room Stiftung Olbricht, Berlin | group |
2014 | Nude | Gemeentemuseum, The Hague | group |
2014 | Somos Libres II: Works from the Mario Testino Collection | Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin | group |
2014 | Queensize - Female Artists from the Olbricht Collection | me Collectors Room Stiftung Olbricht, Berlin | group |
2014 | Disturbing Innocence | The FLAG Art Foundation, New York | group |
2014 | SHE: Picturing women at the turn of the 21st century | David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island | group |
2014 | Love Story: The Anne and Wolfgang Titze Collection | Winter Palace and 21er Haus, Belvedere, Vienna | group |
2014 | Spaced Out: Migration to the Interior | Red Bull Studios, New York | group |
2013 | Expanding the Field of Painting | Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston | group |
2013 | Lisa Yuskavage | greengrassi, London | solo |
2012 | Haunting Narratives: Detours from Philadelphia Realism, 1935 to the Present | Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia | group |
2012 | Pittura (1995-2009) | Studio Guenzani, Milan | group |
2012 | Print/Out | The Museum of Modern Art, New York | group |
2012 | The Distaff Side | The Granary, Sharon, Connecticut | group |
2012 | Decades: Contemporary Collecting 2002-2012 | Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York | group |
2012 | Faces | Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens | group |
2012 | New to the Print Collection: Matisse to Bourgeois | The Museum of Modern Art, New York | group |
2011 | Full Circle: The Evolution of Fine Art Printmaking at Universal Limited Art Editions | Gardiner Art Gallery, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma | group |
2011 | Legacy: Selections from Emily Fisher Landau's Gift to the Whitney Museum of American Art | Fisher Landau Center for Art, Long Island City, New York | group |
2011 | New York Prints of Mind: Prints from the Universal Limited Art Editions | Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Auburn, New York | group |
2011 | Secret Societies | Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt | group |
2011 | American Exuberance | Rubell Family Collection, Miami | group |
2011 | Lisa Yuskavage | David Zwirner, New York | solo |
2011 | Creating the New Century: Contemporary Art from the Dicke Collection | Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio | group |
2011 | Dublin Contemporary 2011: Terrible Beauty – Art, Crisis, Change & The Office of NonCompliance | Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin | group |
2011 | Universal Limited Art Editions | Aberson Exhibits, Tulsa, Oklahoma | group |
2011 | Lisa Yuskavage | The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin | solo |
2010 | Size Does Matter | The FLAG Art Foundation, New York | group |
2010 | Lisa Yuskavage | greengrassi, London | solo |
2010 | American Printmaking Now | National Art Museum of China, Beijing | group |
2010 | Between Picture and Viewer: The Image in Contemporary Painting | Visual Arts Gallery, School of Visual Arts, New York | group |
2010 | Face to Face | Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna | group |
2010 | Until Now: Collecting the New (1960-2010) | Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota | group |
2009 | Universal Limited Art Editions: Then and Now | Greenfield Sacks Gallery, Santa Monica, California | group |
2009 | 30th Anniversary | Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, California | group |
2009 | Lisa Yuskavage | David Zwirner, New York | solo |
2009 | The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women | Cheim & Read, New York | group |
2009 | Bad Habits | Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York | group |
2009 | Robert Rauschenberg and His Contemporaries: Recent Prints from Universal Limited Art Editions | Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York | group |
2008 | Female Forms and Facets: Artwork by Women from 1975 to the Present | Central Connecticut State University Art Galleries, New Britain, Connecticut | group |
2008 | The Gallery | David Zwirner, New York | group |
2008 | Diana and Actaeon: The Forbidden Glimpse of the Naked Body/Diana und Actaeon: Der verbotene Blick auf die Nacktheit | Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf | group |
2008 | Légende | Domaine départemental de Chamarande, Chamarande, France | group |
2008 | Out of Shape: Stylistic Distortions of the Human Form in Art from the Logan Collection | Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York | group |
2008 | Attention to Detail | The FLAG Art Foundation, New York | group |
2008 | Weighing and Wanting: Selections from the Collection | Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, La Jolla | group |
2008 | Bad Painting - good art | Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna | group |
2008 | Paint Made Flesh | The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee | group |
2008 | Happy Vacation | Thrust Projects, New York | group |
2007 | America Today: 300 Years of Art from the USA | National Art Museum of China, Beijing, | group |
2007 | Multiplex: Directions in Art 1970 to Now | The Museum of Modern Art, New York, | group |
2007 | Paper | Fisher Landau Center for Art, Long Island City, New York | group |
2007 | The Present: The Monique Zajfen Collection | Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, | group |
2007 | Lisa Yuskavage | greengrassi, London | solo |
2007 | Artist Collaborations: Fifty Years of Universal Limited Art Editions | The Museum of Modern Art, New York, | group |
2007 | Don't Look: Contemporary Drawings from an Alumna’s Collection (Martina Yamin Class of 1958) | Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College | group |
2006 | New Work | David Zwirner, New York | solo |
2006 | The Other Side #2: Radical Pursuits: Delights in the subversive and sublime | Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, | group |
2006 | Lisa Yuskavage | Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City | solo |
2005 | Girls on Film | Zwirner & Wirth, New York | group |
2005 | Laguna's Hidden Treasures: Art from Private Collections | Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California | group |
2005 | Post and After: Contemporary Art from the Brandeis Collection | Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham | group |
2005 | Drawn Across the Century: Highlights from the Dillard Collection of Art on Paper | Gallery of Contemporary Art, University of Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, Colorado | group |
2004 | Seeing Other People | Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York | group |
2004 | She’s Come Undone | Artemis Greenberg Van Doren, New York | group |
2004 | Lisa Yuskavage | greengrassi, London | solo |
2004 | 5th International Biennial: Disparities and Deformations | Our Grotesque, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe | group |
2004 | The Charged Image | Joseloff Gallery, University of Hartford, Hartford | group |
2003 | Self Portraits | Deitch Projects, New York | group |
2003 | Skowhegan Faculty Exhibition | Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine | group |
2003 | Stephen Greene: Painter and Teacher | Addison Gallery, Andover, Maryland | group |
2003 | Supernova: Art of the 1990s from the Logan Collection | San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, | group |
2003 | Terrible Beauty | Roebling Hall, New York | group |
2003 | Lisa Yuskavage | Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York | solo |
2003 | de Kooning to Today: Highlights from the Permanent Collection | Whitney Museum of American Art, New York | group |
2003 | Reverie: Works from the Collection of Douglas S. Cramer | The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky | group |
2002 | Fusion Cuisine | Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens | group |
2002 | Go Figure | LUXE, New York | group |
2002 | Visual Jury 2002 Exhibition | Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Massachusetts | group |
2002 | Lisa Yuskavage | greengrassi, London | solo |
2002 | Lisa Yuskavage | greengrassi at The Galleries Show, Royal Academy of Arts, London | solo |
2002 | 177th Annual: An Invitational Exhibition | National Academy of Design, New York | group |
2001 | Lisa Yuskavage | Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York | solo |
2001 | Watercolors | Studio Guenzani, Milan | solo |
2001 | Arte Contemporaneo Internacional | Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City | group |
2001 | Camera Works: The Photographic Impulse in Contemporary Arts | Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York | group |
2001 | furor scribendi: Works on Paper | Angles Gallery, Los Angeles | group |
2001 | Lisa Yuskavage | Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva | solo |
2001 | Naked Since 1950 | C&M Arts, New York | group |
2001 | Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, and More…On Collecting | Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington | group |
2001 | Works on Paper from Acconci to Zittel | Victoria Miro Gallery, London | group |
2001 | Lateral Thinking | Art of the 1990s, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego | group |
2000 | Lisa Yuskavage | Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia | solo |
2000 | 46th Corcoran Biennial: Media/Metaphor | Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. | group |
2000 | Drawn From Life | Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York | group |
2000 | The Figure: Another Side of Modernism | Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, New York | group |
2000 | Go Figure | Norfolk Public Library, Norfolk, Connecticut | group |
2000 | Greater New York | P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York | group |
2000 | A Plurality of Truths | Schick Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs | group |
2000 | Salon | Delfina Project Space, London | group |
2000 | Twisted: Urban Visionary Landscapes in Contemporary Painting | Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands | group |
2000 | Works on Paper 2000 | American Ambassador’s Residence, Bratislava, Slovakia | group |
2000 | Unknown | Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York | group |
2000 | 0 | Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York | group |
2000 | 2000 Whitney Biennial | Whitney Museum of American Art, New York | group |
1999 | Invitational Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture | American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York | group |
1999 | Lisa Yuskavage | greengrassi, London | solo |
1999 | The Nude in Contemporary Art | Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut | group |
1999 | Spellbound | Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles | group |
1999 | The Time of Our Lives | New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York | group |
1999 | 6th Istanbul Biennial: The Passion and the Wave | Istanbul | group |
1999 | Looking at Ourselves: Works by Women Artists From the Logan Collection | San Francisco Museum of Modern Art | group |
1999 | Negotiating Small Truths | Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin | group |
1998 | Lisa Yuskavage | Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York | solo |
1998 | A Portrait of Our Times: An Introduction to the Logan Collection | San Francisco Museum of Modern Art | group |
1998 | From Here to Eternity | Max Protetch Gallery, New York | group |
1998 | Now and Later | Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut | group |
1998 | Risk of Existence | Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York | group |
1998 | Young Americans 2 | Saatchi Gallery, London | group |
1998 | People Places and Things | Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York | group |
1998 | Pop Surrealism | Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut | group |
1998 | Presumed Innocence | Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond | group |
1997 | The Name of the Place | Casey Kaplan, New York | group |
1997 | Project Painting | Lehmann Maupin and Basilico Fine Arts, New York | group |
1997 | SLAD | apexart, New York | group |
1997 | Women’s Work: Examining the Feminine in Contemporary Painting | Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina | group |
1997 | My Little Pretty: Images of Girls by Contemporary Women Artists | Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago | group |
1997 | Lisa Yuskavage | Studio Guenzani, Milan | solo |
1996 | Lisa Yuskavage | Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, California | solo |
1996 | Adicere Animos | Cesena-Cesenatico, Bologna, Italy | group |
1996 | Early Learning | L & R Entwistle Ltd., London | group |
1996 | Heart's Desire | Judy Ann Goldman, Boston | group |
1996 | Intermission | Basilico Fine Arts, New York | group |
1996 | Norfolk '96 | Yale Summer School of Music and Art, Norfolk, Connecticut | group |
1996 | Rome Invitational | Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia | group |
1996 | The Tailor's Dummy | Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, California | group |
1996 | What I did on my summer vacation | White Columns, New York | group |
1996 | Lisa Yuskavage | Boesky & Callery, New York | solo |
1995 | Gang Warfare | The MacKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas | group |
1995 | Not Not (Who's There?) | E.S. Vandam, New York | group |
1995 | On Beauty | Regina Gallery, Moscow | group |
1995 | Pictura Immedia | Malerei in den 90er Jahren, Kunstlerhaus and Neue Galerie, Graz | group |
1995 | Youth Culture Killed My Dog (But I Don’t Really Mind) | Contemporary Arts Council, Chicago | group |
1995 | Diverse Group | apexart, New York | group |
1995 | An Offering to San Simeon | Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, California | group |
1994 | Don't Postpone Joy or Collecting Can Be Fun | Austrian Cultural Center, New York | group |
1994 | Lisa Yuskavage | Luhring Augustine, New York | solo |
1994 | New Work | Johan Jonker Galleria, Amsterdam | group |
1994 | NY/NL: XX | Gemeenteligh Helmont Museum, Helmond, The Netherlands | group |
1994 | Out West and Back East: New Work from New York and Los Angeles | Santa Monica Museum of Art, California | group |
1994 | Up the Establishment | Sonnabend Gallery, New York | group |
1994 | Lisa Yuskavage | Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, California | solo |
1994 | Watercolors | Elizabeth Koury, New York | solo |
1994 | I Myself and Me | The InterArt Center, New York | group |
1993 | Lisa Yuskavage | Studio Guenzani, Milan | solo |
1993 | The Figure as Fiction: The Figure in Visual Art and Literature | Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio | group |
1993 | Medium Messages | Wooster Gardens, New York | group |
1993 | Mr. Serling's Neighborhood | Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, California | group |
1993 | The Return of the Cadavre Exquis | The Drawing Center, New York | group |
1993 | Lisa Yuskavage | Elizabeth Koury, New York | solo |
1993 | Yale Collects Yale | Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut | group |
1992 | The Anti-Masculine | Kim Light Gallery, Los Angeles | group |
1992 | A Paper Trail | Berland/Hall Gallery, New York | group |
1992 | Group Exhibition | Elizabeth Koury, New York | group |
1992 | Little Men/Little Women | White Columns, New York | group |
1991 | Fine Arts Work Benefit Show | Twining Gallery, New York | group |
1991 | FIAR International Exhibition | Rome, Italy | group |
1990 | Lisa Yuskavage | Pamela Auchincloss Gallery, New York | solo |
1989 | Juried Show '89 | New Jersey Center for the Visual Arts, Summit, New Jersey | group |
1988 | Emerging Artists | WWAC Gallery, Westport, Connecticut | group |
1988 | Twenty Artists Choose Twenty Artists | Provincetown Art Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts | group |
1987 | New Work | New Talent, New Haven, Harcus Gallery | group |
1986 | New Talent | Alpha Gallery, Boston | group |