Lisa Yuskavage's Narcissistic Nudes: A Thirty-Year Practice

Lisa Yuskavage, born in Philadelphia in 1962 and based in New York, has for over thirty years pursued an unconventional approach to figurative painting. She paints women, often nude, and has frequently used herself as a model since early in her career—a practice that was more unusual a quarter-century ago. Her eccentric exhibitionism begins with a focus on a carmine nipple and expands to the whole body. A pivotal shift occurred after a year of study in Rome and exposure to European classical painters: Giovanni Bellini, Vermeer, Degas, and particularly Vuillard's "Green Interior" (1891). Yuskavage's mature work blends color field painting with a hazy figuration that mixes classicist reminiscences—sometimes with landscape or still-life elements—and a Yankee pop-like briskness. She plays with the subject/object split, layering explicit and veiled sexuality, resulting in an emotional formalism that feels alien yet intriguing.