Talk

Brash, sensual, monstrous and lovely—sometimes all at once—Lisa Yuskavage’s paintings and drawings have enchanted and startled viewers since her first New York solo show in 1993. Known for her extreme and provocative depictions of women, Yuskavage creates virtuoso, jewel-tone paintings that blend high and low aesthetic influences. She has recently turned in a more complex psychological direction with a series of investigations of symbiotic relationships, which strike a delicate balance between tenderness and violence, and between the sacred and the profane. Her exaggerated figures of the 1990s have evolved into the contemplative protagonist of the painting Persimmons, lost in thought amidst a sunny still life of flowers and ripe fruit, or the two figures in Imprint (2006), who seem to meld into one another. Acknowledging the influence of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne and other classical works depicting passionate struggles between two people, Yuskavage’s quiet power plays take place against dreamy sfumato backdrops or within cozy, close-color interiors.

The Public Art Fund has produced this ongoing lecture series of presentations and discussions by some of today’s most influential artists, critics, and curators, including Takashi Murakami, Jeff Koons, Rachel Whiteread, Matthew Barney, Gabriel Orozco, Pipilotti Rist, Tony Oursler, Catherine David, Kasper Konig, Okwui Enwezor, and Lynne Cook.