Lisa Yuskavage : Small Paintings, 1993-2004

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Summary: A Glimpse at the Seeds of the Mind of Lisa Yuskavage
Review: For an Artist Monograph this book is very well done. The reproductions of paintings are excellent and are the actual size of the small paintings. The commentary by Tamara Jenkins is comfortably readable and informative. The pros and cons of this volume are really dependent on your views of Lisa Yuskavage's art.

Yuskavage paints cartoon like women with huge breasts, impossibly small waists, and googly eyes. Her message is fairly clear: she is presenting the female figure as the sex symbol and mindless Barbie Doll which in any other artist's hands would have feminists up in arms. But since these well-crafted but pungent tongue-in-cheek portraits are painted by a woman, that makes it all an insider's joke.

Lisa Yuskavage and John Currin are the two most well known artists working in this Pop Movement distorted realism that pokes fun at the old Vargas girls and pinups. That is working for them: they both sell their works well. It is just that these works are one-note songs and they produce ennui after the first quick viewing. This book at least lets us see the initial ideas of an artist who knows what she is doing - and making a lot of money doing it! Grady Harp, December 2004

Rating:
Summary: optic heaven
Review: This is a beautiful volume on an emerging artist whom I find very entertaining. Lisa Yuskavage's work is represented here in dozens of color images - very nice in quality and size. Yes, her work features women with impossibly huge breasts almost without exception - if that's not a subject you care to see depicted over and over then this may not be the book for you. Beyond her buxom subjects, however, these paintings also display a very sly sense of humor and a mastery of her medium. Yuskavage's sense of color is stunning; it's easy to get lost looking at the frothy pastel swirls of foliage and human form - I feel like I'm treating my optic nerves to an ice cream sundae.

If you've seen a little of her work and are looking for more (as I was) this is a terrific book - and at this price you can't go wrong.