Lisa Yuskavage

Lisa Yuskavage
Born	(1962-05-16) May 16, 1962 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nationality	American
Education	Tyler School of Art Yale School of Art
Known for	Painting

Lisa Yuskavage (LĒS-ə yus-KĀ-vij) is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. She is known for her figurative paintings, in which seemingly ignoble subjects are depicted with classic, historical techniques, resulting in exquisitely painted, visually paradoxical canvases.

Education

Yuskavage was born in 1962 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and studied abroad during her third year through the Tyler School of Art’s program in Rome, before obtaining her BFA in 1984. Yuskavage received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 1986.

Work

Since the early 1990s, Yuskavage has shaped her own genre of the nude—voluptuous, erotic, cartoonish, angelic young women, and more recently men, cast within atmospheric landscapes that appear part fiction, part real. She is widely associated with a re-emergence of the figurative in contemporary painting, and her complex, psychologically-charged narratives are often cinematic in scope, with the plots revealing themselves slowly. Of the artist’s paintings, critic Roberta Smith has written: "The combination of mixed subliminal messages, deliciously artificial color and forthright sexuality is characteristic of Ms. Yuskavage's work, as is the journey from high to low to lower culture within a relatively seamless whole."

Yuskavage’s oeuvre is characterized by her ongoing engagement with the history of painting, and in particular the genre of the nude, which for centuries was shrouded as religious subject matter. Yet her paintings also encompass landscape and still life genres, and all three often appear within a single work. Yuskavage’s unique use of color is imbedded in Renaissance techniques as well Color Field painting, and she cites diverse inspirations, including Italian painter Giovanni Bellini, Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, and French painter Edgar Degas.

Critics have responded to Yuskavage’s works with diverse interpretations, many of which rely on binaries to capture the surreal nature of her subject matter; these descriptions include: “alienation and affection,” “self-love and self-loathing,” and “vulgarity and earnestness.” Theoretically, her paintings are associated with psychologically driven theories of viewing, such as that of the gaze. However, the complexities inherent in her paintings deny singular interpretation; as curator and critic Christian Viveros-Fauné explains: “Yuskavage’s oeuvre… succeeds exactly to the degree that it refuses to be pinned down to any one of its many conflicted meanings. ‘I only load the gun,’ [Yuskavage] has been known to say to those who insist on viewing a painting as an explanation.”

She had a New York exhibit sell out before it opened, and one of her paintings sold at auction for more than $1 million.

In September 2015, Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood will open at The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University in Massachusetts. This major solo exhibition will present the artist’s work spanning twenty-five years. Additionally, Yuskavage is featured in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new online series, The Artist Project, launched in March 2015, in which she discusses Édouard Vuillard’s The Green Interior (1891).

Lisa Yuskavage is represented by David Zwirner, New York and greengrassi, London. She has had four solo exhibitions at David Zwirner, New York and six solo presentations at greengrassi, London.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Notable solo presentations include:

• The Brood, The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2015)
• Lisa Yuskavage, The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2011)
• Lisa Yuskavage, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2006)
• Lisa Yuskavage, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2002)
• Lisa Yuskavage, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2001)
• Lisa Yuskavage, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2000)

Group exhibitions

Recent group exhibitions include:

• Queensize - Female Artists from the Olbricht Collection, me Collectors Room Stiftung Olbricht, Berlin (2014)
• Lisa Yuskavage, The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2011)
• Nude, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (2014)
• Expanding the Field of Painting, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2013)
• Print/Out, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012)
• New to the Print Collection: Matisse to Bourgeois, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012)
• American Exuberance, Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2011)
• Face to Face, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2010)
• Between Picture and Viewer: The Image in Contemporary Painting, School of Visual Arts, New York (2010)
• Bad Habits, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2009)
• Paint Made Flesh, The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee (2008) (traveled to The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; The Memorial Art Gallery, The University of Rochester, Rochester, New York)
• Diana and Actaeon: The Forbidden Glimpse of the Naked Body, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf (2008)
• Bad Painting - good art, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2008)
• The Present: The Monique Zajfen Collection, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2007)
• Multiplex: Directions in Art 1970 to Now, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007)
• Artist Collaborations: Fifty Years of Universal Limited Art Editions, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007)
• America Today: 300 Years of Art from the USA, National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2007)
• 5th International Biennial: Disparities and Deformations, Our Grotesque, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico (2004)
• de Kooning to Today: Highlights from the Permanent Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2003)
• Supernova: Art of the 1990s from the Logan Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2003)
• Greater New York, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York (2000)
• 2000 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2000)
• 46th Corcoran Biennial: Media/Metaphor, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2000)

Collections

Museum collections which hold works by the artist include The Art Institute of Chicago; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Awards

Yuskavage has been the recipient of honors and awards that include the Tiffany Foundation Grant (1996); the Founder's Day Certificate of Honor, Tyler School of the Arts, Philadelphia (2000); and the Temple University Gallery of Success Award, Temple University, Philadelphia (2005).

Lectures

• "Lisa Yuskavage Artist Talk," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (2014)
• "Artist Talk: Lisa Yuskavage on Vuillard," The Jewish Museum, New York (2012)
• "Lisa Yuskavage with Alexi Worth: In Conversation," New York Studio School (2012)
• "Lisa Yuskavage," 92nd Street Y, New York (2010)
• "Lisa Yuskavage," Massachusetts College of Art & Design, Boston (2010)
• "Lisa Yuskavage," San Francisco Art Institute (2009)
• "Lisa Yuskavage," School of Visual Arts, New York (2009)
• "Lisa Yuskavage: A Lecture," Woldenberg Art Center, Tulane University, New Orleans (2009)
• "Lisa Yuskavage," Public Art Funds Talk, New School, New York (2007)
• "ArtTalks: Lisa Yuskavage," American Federation of Arts, New York (2005)
• "Lisa Yuskavage in conversation with James Rondeau," The Art Institute of Chicago (2005)

Publications

• Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood, Paintings 1991-2015. Texts by Christopher Bedford, Suzanne Hudson, Catherine Lord, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Katy Siegel. To be published by Skira Rizzoli, New York, 2015. ISBN 9780847846481
• Lisa Yuskavage. Published by David Zwirner, New York, 2006. ISBN 0976913658
• Lisa Yuskavage. Texts by Tobias Ostrander and Christian Viveros-Fauné. Published by Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, 2006. ISBN 9789685979146
• Lisa Yuskavage. Text by Tamara Jenkins. Published by Abrams Books, New York, 2004. ISBN 9780810949577
• Lisa Yuskavage. Texts by Claudia Gould, Marcia B. Hall, and Katy Siegel. Published by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1999. ISBN 0884540979
• Lisa Yuskavage. Texts by Chuck Close and Faye Hirsch. Published by Smart Art Press, Santa Monica, California, 1996. ISBN 9780964642652

External links

• Lisa Yuskavage Official Website
• Lisa Yuskavage at David Zwirner
• Lisa Yuskavage at greengrassi
• Selected Press at David Zwirner
• Lisa Yuskavage, The Artist's Project, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Peter Schjeldahl, “Odd Twins Lisa Yuskavage and Edouard Vuillard,” The New Yorker, June 4, 2012
• Andrea Scott, “Dangerous Beauty,” The New Yorker, October 24, 2011
• Ken Johnson, “Lisa Yuskavage at David Zwirner,” The New York Times, October 7, 2011
• Roberta Smith, “A Painter Who Loads the Gun and Lets the Viewer Fire It,” The New York Times, January 12, 2001
• Peter Schjeldahl, “Purple Nipple,” The Village Voice, September 29, 1998