“Maybe the best way to approach my work is to recognise what it makes you think about, and then think of the opposite.”
Lisa YuskavageThree Gloves / One Girl Holding Another Girl's Leg, 2006
These magnificently smutty pin-ups are not about the male gaze.
As a child, American painter Lisa Yuskavage went to public museums to talk to old masters like Caravaggio – through their paintings. “When I look at art, I realise that you’re communicating with the dead,” she explains.
Transference Portrait of My Shrink in Her Starched Nightgown with My Face and Her Hair, 1995
In the 1980s, Lisa followed her childhood dreams and enrolled at Yale School of Art. Despite its prestige, Lisa found herself bored of her own paintings, later describing them as “what a woman artist who went to Yale might make.”
Walking Gun, Laurie Simmons, 1991
Nostalgic manipulating man-produced, idealized objects, Mike Kelley, 1990
In the early 1990s, inspired by performances artists like Mike Kelley and Laurie Simmons, Lisa finally began to make paintings that she was truly fulfilled by – paintings she wanted to see, but had never seen before. Sordid, sultry, powerful and full of contradictions, Lisa’s women thrive on being looked at, but are also totally absorbed in their own world.
The ones that don't want to : Kelly Marie, 1992
Fleshpot, 1995
Big Blonde Squatting, 1994
In centuries to come, we’ll talk to Lisa and her luscious women just like she spoke to Caravaggio.
Pie Face, 2008
