The New Yorker, review by Hilton Als
2025
The bodies on display in Lisa Yuskavage: Drawings (at the Morgan Library through January 4th) are studies in attention, which, as the poet Mary Oliver said, is the “beginning of devotion.” For more than thirty years now, Yuskavage has been devoted to using the tools of art to produce an imagined wonderland of bodies. Her paintings are gardens of possibility in which women are portrayed across the spectrum from the kind of fuck dolls that capitalism wants women to be to strong, independent selves whose defiance tells viewers to fuck off. Yuskavage’s paintings are generally large-scale, filled with light and color and a kind of good will, so it’s fascinating and enlivening to see, at the Morgan, how her themes play out in the more modest arena of drawings.
Curated with flair and insight by the Morgan’s Claire Gilman, the show is organized in one of the museum’s smaller rooms, and the close space only enhances the rapport you feel with the art itself, which has the delicacy of spun glass. Yuskavage draws with the authority of a master, and, like any master, she keeps refining what her hand is capable of and what her eye sees. There are forty-one works in this exhibition, and they don’t drown one another out. The drawings in color are equal to those in pencil or charcoal, but show different things, including how shading effects a mood, and how, if you edge close to losing control of a watercolor—a medium that requires concentration and a more than deft hand—you can take it to new levels of delicious finesse. That’s what you’ll find in the incredible “Rapture #2” (1993), which shows a white woman’s torso and breasts rising out of a galaxy of circles and bubble shapes reminiscent of a ball pit—a fun place to jump into and roll around in. The light source is to the left of the canvas, and it shines through softly, like the promise of a good day.