When we think of the legendary, groundbreaking artists, we don't talk about Lisa Yuskavage enough. And maybe that will change. She exhibits with one of the world's most important dealers in David Zwirner, whose presentations of her work have been sublime and special in years past. Even her onework at the massive group show, All of Them Witches, at Jeffrey Deitch's space in Los Angeles, was a standout: it almost appeared to glow from the wall, otherworldly in color and execution. Now, she is the subject of retrospective, Wildnerness, now on view at Aspen Art Museum through May 31, 2020.
This exhibition, co-organized by the Aspen Art Museum and Baltimore Museum of Art, "looks beyond the eroticism of the figure to the fantastical nature of Yuskavage’s landscapes." That has always been a feature of Yuskavage's work. Even when the paintings appear to be set indoors, there is a certain fantasy, or dream-like setting that defies an era. The work is seductive, but also almost spiritual. Many of the works look as if you walked upon an American Utopian colony in the late 1960s or early 1970s. That one can see her works en masse at the Aspen Art Museum also shows the diversity of work: from sexual to still-lifes, fairy tale to fierce.
