ART CITIES: N York-Lisa Yuskavage

One of the most original and influential artists of the past three decades, Lisa Yuskavage creates works that affirm the singularity of the medium of painting while challenging conventional understandings of genres and viewership. At once exhibitionist and introspective, her rich cast of characters and their varied attributes are layered within compositions built of both representational and abstract elements, in which color is the primary vehicle of meaning.

By Efi Michlarou
Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum Archive

The exhibition “Lisa Yuskavage: Drawings” is the first career-spanning museum exhibition dedicated to the drawings of Lisa Yuskavage and highlights more than three decades of Yuskavage’s intimate, inventive, and genre-defying works on paper. One of the most influential and original artists working today, Yuskavage is known for her charged portrayals of female subjects, infused with psychological depth, social commentary, and an enduring commitment to the history of painting. At once confrontational and meditative, her works blur the boundaries between high and low art, exploring traditional genres—the nude, portrait, landscape, and still life—with a contemporary eye to issues of female transgression and empowerment rooted in popular culture. In her own words, she is “interested in making art about how things are rather than how they should be.” This exhibition reveals the centrality of drawing to Yuskavage’s practice. From early sketchbook pages to recent large-scale compositions, the presentation includes over forty works made from 1990 to the present in a wide range of media—graphite, watercolor, pastel, Conté crayon, distemper, gouache, ink on paper, and more. Regardless of the project, Yuskavage allows her materials to be her guide. Her career-long inquiry into process and material experimentation has yielded entirely new ways of seeing and comprehending the world. “Lisa Yuskavage: Drawings” shows visitors how the artist develops her characters, compositions, and use of color across media,  her drawings reveal a deep and ongoing engagement not just with historical painting genres but also with historic examples of the artistic process, seen through her investigations into models, sculpted maquettes, and the artist’s studio.” Highlights of the exhibition include the “Tit Heaven” (1991–93) watercolor series, created while Yuskavage was teaching herself the medium; drawings for the provocative “Bad Babies” (1991–92), a series of paintings that confront desire and shame; and drawings from her “Bad Habits” (1996–98) series, in which she interrogates the role of the model and reinvents historical tropes through the inclusion of sculpted props, friends, and invented characters. The exhibition concludes with Yuskavage directing her attention to another classic art historical genre: the artist’s studio, seen through a series of drawings filled with references to the studios of artists she admires (2019–23).

Photo: Lisa Yuskavage, Still Life Wearing a Wig, 1999, Watercolor on paper, Private collection © Lisa Yuskavage. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner

Info: Curator: Claire Gilman, The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 27/6/2025-7/1/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:30-17:30, Fri 10:30-20:00, www.themorgan.org/