A new focus on the sublime landscapes in Lisa Yuskavage's voluptuous figure paintings
Though she is arguably best known for the voluptuous female nudes that populate her paintings, Lisa Yuskavage's work is just as focused on the ethereal settings in which these subjects appear. Yuskavage creates finely detailed landscapes that blur the line between the fantastical and the familiar, melding abstraction with realism to depict self-contained worlds. These outdoor scenes defy conventions of landscape painting with surreal color palettes of lush greens and delicate pinks, cast in a gauzy light quality that highlights the almost magical nature of her paintings.
Published in conjunction with a joint exhibition between the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado and the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland, this volume includes color reproductions of Yuskavage's paintings and watercolors from the early 1990s to the present, as well as an interview between Yuskavage and fellow artist Mary Weatherford.Based in New York City, American artist Lisa Yuskavage (born 1962) received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 1986. In the years since, her signature style of figure painting has developed something of a cult following for its attention to art historical tradition and a decidedly contemporary, pop culture-based approach to the representation of the female form. Her work has been in solo exhibitions around the world. Yuskavage is represented by David Zwirner.
Industry Reviews
Yuskavage creates finely detailed landscapes that blur the line between the fantastical and the familiar, melding abstraction with realism to depict self-contained worlds. These outdoor scenes defy conventions of landscape painting with surreal color palettes of lush greens and delicate pinks, cast in a gauzy light quality that highlights the almost magical nature of her paintings. -- James Cox * Midwest Book Review *
Having developed a strong visual identity linked to exploring female anatomy, Yuskavage's paintings leave little room for feelings of indifference. They are challenging and uncomfortably explicit, yet there is a mysterious aura that captures the viewer. Voluptuous female figures with impossibly huge breasts, perfect peach skin and child-like complexion play around immersed in idyllic landscapes. -- Augustina Mistretta * Aspen Daily News *
...[P]ay attention to what Yuskavage has been doing in the background. There, you'll find groundbreaking landscapes ranging from the romantic to the apocalyptic. It's a journey from Eden to hell and back. -- Andrew Travers * Aspen Times *
Yuskavage, a masterful colorist, makes lush, luminous, intentionally - and delightfully - gauche paintings that unsettle facile notions of misogyny, femininity and the female gaze. -- Julia Felsenthal * New York Times: Style *
Lisa Yuskavage is perhaps best known for her paintings of voluptuous sexualized female figures in romantic, dramatically lit environments [...] Yuskavage ascribes an otherworldly transcendence to her portraits, eschewing pictorial conventions to lend a sense of seductivity to the everyday. -- Ryan Waddoups * Surface *
[W]idely recognized for her distinct use of color and form to subvert pictorial depictions, establishing a world of her own with its own myths and fantastical conventions [...] the boundary-pushing painter...introduc[ed] her sexualized female subjects across pictorial paintings. -- Keith Estiler * Hypebeast *
For over three decades, Yuskavage's magical, provocative paintings of nude women (and to a lesser extent, men) have raised the eyebrows of the more conservative ilk for their perceived carnality [...] Make no mistake-Yuskavage isn't trying to portray these women as particularly sexual, she's simply allowing the women in her paintings to just "be". -- Ann Binlot * Document Journal *
