In the Studio: Lisa Yuskavage
Why It Matters
Yuskavage’s integration of recurring imagery with innovative mixed‑media challenges traditional figurative boundaries, signaling a potent new direction for collectors and the broader art discourse.
Key Takeaways
- •Yuskavage titles work humorously, referencing cultural “Joy” series.
- •She revisits recurring figures across decades, creating a personal visual archive.
- •Color‑Aid paper and dense pigments drive the new mixed‑media approach.
- •Black‑and‑white trompe‑l’oeil photo challenges perception amid vivid color fields.
- •Themes of repression, judgment, and self‑critique underpin her figurative narratives.
Summary
In a candid studio interview, painter Lisa Yuskavage explains the genesis of her latest series, The Joy of Painting. The title riffs on iconic “Joy” manuals, injecting humor while signaling a fresh, self‑referential chapter in her career.
Yuskavage reveals that the works recycle characters spanning three decades, each rendered on Color‑Aid paper with gouache, egg tempera and pastel—materials chosen for their dense, oil‑free pigment. The underpainting’s scraped‑down color field becomes the foreground, a deliberate contradiction that blurs abstraction and figuration. A black‑and‑white trompe‑l’oeil photograph sits amid vivid blocks, questioning reality and reinforcing her preoccupation with color temperature, saturation and brightness.
Memorable moments include her description of the “Nelzia” figures as metaphors for repression, the quote “the subject is the object, the object is the subject,” and a nod to Morandi’s bottles influencing her sculptural “bad habit” pieces. She also references the monumental canvas Gigantic Studio, where familiar motifs converge with a nod to a Metropolitan Museum masterpiece.
The conversation underscores Yuskavage’s evolving methodology: a blend of personal iconography, material experimentation, and conceptual depth that pushes contemporary figurative painting toward a hybrid of narrative and abstraction, attracting both critical attention and market interest.
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