Three Painters Subvert Realist Tradition at David Zwirner

The article examines concurrent exhibitions of Lisa Yuskavage, Neo Rauch, and Michaël Borremans at Galerie David Zwirner in New York from September 27 to November 5, 2011. All three artists, born in the early 1960s, employ traditional realist techniques for postmodern ends, creating works that are intentionally implausible through scale shifts, exaggerated details, and surreal juxtapositions. Borremans, the most acerbic, references Velázquez and socialist realism; his painting The Devil's Dress shows a boy in a wooden dress, recalling Manet's Dead Toreador. Neo Rauch, from East Germany, blends eras and styles in complex compositions like Fundgrube, where contemporary women play ring toss while period-costumed men gather around a propeller-like sculpture. Yuskavage's works feature oversexualized young women and eroticized fruit in kitschy, Bonnard-like light, with ghostly background figures suggesting Russian peasants. The artists' shared distrust of realism's truth claims reflects a postmodern condition: realism can only be practiced through citation of pre-existing styles. Having grown up in the post-Cold War world, they reject both social and socialist realism's ideological baggage, using realism purely for abstract painterly pleasure.