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Lot Essay
Lisa Yuskavage's work references formal impulses including the Baroque, Mannerism and Color Field painting, while her subject matter boldly ventures into the taboo, exploring issues of desire, lust and sexuality. Influenced equally by porn and formal portraiture (she compares her favorite Penthouse photographs from the 70's to Vermeer's canvases), Yuskavage creates paintings that have altered the artistic tradition of rendering the female body. In fact, Yuskavage studied painting at Yale where she learned to paint from young, nude, female models whose casually-staged poses turn up in her canvases in a variety of titillating positions. Hailed as a great colorist, with Night Yuskavage distinguishes herself from her other candy-colored canvases. Here, she is more Caravaggio than Bonnard, replacing the decorative domestic interiors in her recent paintings with an eerily dark and dangerous background, a hallowed out space for her gorgeously rendered woman.
Lisa Yuskavage's paintings strengthen the vitality that oil paint has in its ability to render light and flesh. At first glance, the figure's bulbous nose and exaggerated features appear cartoonish, but unlike caricature, Yuskavage's painting technique follows a slow process, in which she builds up the canvas surface with the utmost care and deliberation. She handles paint with extreme sophistication, a technique that she shares with her contemporary John Currin.
In Night, the central figure indulges in a quiet moment of repose and self-reflection that is tinged with eroticism and melancholy. In contrast to the tiny woman in the background who rushes off the canvas carrying a plate of food, she is tranquil if not groggy. As she gathers the white cloth of her slip, revealing her elongated torso and distorted buttocks, she wearily contemplates her body, sizing up her own appearance. In this gesture, Yuskavage enters a dark corner of the female psyche: the approval of her own desire of wanting and being wanted. The artist dares us to confront her and we are quick to oblige not only because the image feels illicit and racy, but because the painting is profoundly beautiful. The intimacy of the moment is rendered in exaggerated forms: hard nipples, sticklike arms, doughy breasts and buttocks, and elongated fingers that recall the Mannerist canvases of Parmigianino, all bathed in diffuse light. Touches of pink and gold paint woven into her cascading mane of hair cast highlights on her forehead, nose and bottom lip. Further interest in light and shadow is reflected in the figure's uneven tan as well as in the smaller figure lurking in the darkness, nipple and nose pointed upward at attention.
That the figure is so exquisitely painted and the subject matter so provocative and prohibited problematizes the issue of painting itself. Yuskavage has been branded a "Bad Girl" together with the artist Cecily Brown and John Currin, who might be said to be a "Bad Boy Bad Girl." The artist's hypersexualized images of women are erotic and distorted while simultaneously constituting some of the most convincingly cultural narratives in contemporary art.
Whether the artist is consciously or unconsciously perpetuating or abolishing stereotypes of the female form, Night delves into the human psyche to illuminate our understanding of ourselves and investigate emotions that make us feel at once guilty and powerful. Yuskavage invites us into her world, but yields little to convention. Much of her work to date is hermetic and very personal. She resists both critics and art historians' categorization and instead chooses to retreat into subject matter she admits is uncomfortable, embarrassing and often dangerous.
Lisa Yuskavage's paintings strengthen the vitality that oil paint has in its ability to render light and flesh. At first glance, the figure's bulbous nose and exaggerated features appear cartoonish, but unlike caricature, Yuskavage's painting technique follows a slow process, in which she builds up the canvas surface with the utmost care and deliberation. She handles paint with extreme sophistication, a technique that she shares with her contemporary John Currin.
In Night, the central figure indulges in a quiet moment of repose and self-reflection that is tinged with eroticism and melancholy. In contrast to the tiny woman in the background who rushes off the canvas carrying a plate of food, she is tranquil if not groggy. As she gathers the white cloth of her slip, revealing her elongated torso and distorted buttocks, she wearily contemplates her body, sizing up her own appearance. In this gesture, Yuskavage enters a dark corner of the female psyche: the approval of her own desire of wanting and being wanted. The artist dares us to confront her and we are quick to oblige not only because the image feels illicit and racy, but because the painting is profoundly beautiful. The intimacy of the moment is rendered in exaggerated forms: hard nipples, sticklike arms, doughy breasts and buttocks, and elongated fingers that recall the Mannerist canvases of Parmigianino, all bathed in diffuse light. Touches of pink and gold paint woven into her cascading mane of hair cast highlights on her forehead, nose and bottom lip. Further interest in light and shadow is reflected in the figure's uneven tan as well as in the smaller figure lurking in the darkness, nipple and nose pointed upward at attention.
That the figure is so exquisitely painted and the subject matter so provocative and prohibited problematizes the issue of painting itself. Yuskavage has been branded a "Bad Girl" together with the artist Cecily Brown and John Currin, who might be said to be a "Bad Boy Bad Girl." The artist's hypersexualized images of women are erotic and distorted while simultaneously constituting some of the most convincingly cultural narratives in contemporary art.
Whether the artist is consciously or unconsciously perpetuating or abolishing stereotypes of the female form, Night delves into the human psyche to illuminate our understanding of ourselves and investigate emotions that make us feel at once guilty and powerful. Yuskavage invites us into her world, but yields little to convention. Much of her work to date is hermetic and very personal. She resists both critics and art historians' categorization and instead chooses to retreat into subject matter she admits is uncomfortable, embarrassing and often dangerous.