Lisa Yuskavage

Art Brokerage: Lisa Yuskavage American Artist: b. 1962. Lisa Yuskavage is an American artist. She is known for her figurative paintings and figure paintings, in which seemingly ignoble subjects are depicted with classic, historical techniques, resulting in exquisitely painted, visually paradoxical canvases. 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 as Color Field painting, and she cites diverse inspirations, including Italian painter Giovanni Bellini, Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, and French painter Edgar Degas. Listings wanted.