Lisa Yuskavage - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, May 13, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Boesky Callery Gallery, New York

  • Exhibited

    New York, Boesky Callery Gallery, Lisa Yuskavage, October – November 1996 (another example exhibited); Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, My Little Pretty: Images of Girls by Contemporary Women Artists, April 19 – June 22, 1997 (another example exhibited); Philadelphia, Institute of contemporary Art, Lisa Yuskavage, December 2, 2000 – February 9, 2001 (another example exhibited).

  • Literature

    R. Vine, “Lisa Yuskavage at Boesky Gallery,” Art in America, February 1997, p. 104; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, ed., My Little Pretty: Images of Girls by Contemporary Women Artists, Chicago, 1997, p. 10 – 12 (another example illustrated); L. Liebmann and B. Adams, Young Americans 2: New American Art at the Saatchi Gallery, London, 1998, n.p., (another example illustrated); C. Gould, K. Siegel, & M. Hull, Lisa Yuskavage, Philadelphia, 2000, pp. 10, 17 – 18, 41, 74 (another example illustrated); C. Lovelace, “Lisa Yuskavage: Fleshed Out,” Art in America, July 2001, p. 84; T. Jenkins, Lisa Yuskavage: Small Paintings 1993 – 2004, New York, 2004, p. 28 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    I don’t think there is an uninteresting person alive. It’s just that not everyone has access to themselves, to the full range of their emotional life. That is why my work often embarrasses me and why I need it to embarrass me. Being embarrassed allows me to access more surprising pictorial solutions. I don’t know precisely how, but it seems to function as a clarifying agent Lisa Yuskavage in C. Gould, “Screwing it on Straight,” Lisa Yuskavage, Philadelphia, 2000, p. 12 
     
    The five figurines echo the mannerist distortions of her earlier work –the bloated bellies, elongated necks, and giant butts; in fact, some of the figures are lifted directly from certain paintings. After she had finished with each figure, Yuskavage (who talks to her art, although she is quick to point out that it does not talk back) wagged her finger, chastising the little sculptures as variously, “asspicker, foodeater, headshrinker, socialclimber, motherfucker.” The names are funny and angry, lifted from a scene in the film River’s Edge, where a frustrated teenager inarticulately accuses his mother’s refrigeratorraiding boyfriend of being a “foodeating motherfucker.” The title of the group is Bad Habits, borrowed from the title of a 1970 painting by Philip Guston, a hero to many artists for the scathingly witty, unsparing self-criticism of his later work (Guston counted painting as among his bad habits, along with drinking, smoking, and eating). The figures’ sources come from high and low.
    K. Siegel, “Local Color,” Lisa Yuskavage, Philadelphia, 2000, p. 17
     

144

Bad Habits: Asspicking, Foodeating, Headshrinking, Socialclimbing, Motherfucker

1996

Cast hydrocal with artificial pearls and flowers in five parts.

Asspicking: 9 x 4 x 5 1/2 in. (22.9 x 10.2 x 14 cm); Foodeating: 10 x 4 3/4 x 5 1/2 in. (25.4 x 12.1 x 14 cm); Headshrinking: 12 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 3 3/4 in. (31.8 x 11.4 x 9.5 cm); Socialclimbing: 10 x 4 x 3 3/4 in. (25.4 x 10.2 x 9.5 cm); Motherfucker: 9 1/2 x 4 x 3 1/2 in. (24.1 x 10.2 x 9 cm).
Signed, titled and dated “Lisa Yuskavage ‘Bad Habits: Asspicking, Foodeating, Headshrinking, Socialclimbing,Motherfucker’ 1996” on the underside of Asspicking; each individually titled and numbered of ten on the underside. This work is from an edition of ten plus five artist’s proofs.

Estimate
$120,000 - 180,000 

Contemporary Art Part I

13 May 2010
New York