Seriously cute
The woman at the centre of Lisa Yuskavage’s Déjà Vu is one of the leading New York painter’s typical weird babes, mixing the girly cuteness of 1970s Sarah Kay illustrations with a voluptuous body to rival the Paleolithic-era figurine Venus of Willendorf.
High and low
There’s a double-satire at work here, partly connected to all the simpering sweetness and overblown fantasy boobs and bums around, and partly to painting itself. Like her peer John Currin, Yuskavage has turned old master techniques on their heads by applying them to the trashy and kitsch.
Fifty shades
The group of hippy dudes here recall grisaille, grey painting traditionally used on church interiors to suggest sculpture. Betrayed by their love handles, however, they are hardly “heroic nudes”, the term used to describe the idealised naked men of classical sculpture.
Bad romance
Yuskavage also seems to be playing with the female nude’s role in religious and mythological painting. As the title suggests, there is something supernatural about the woman, whose eyes are closed, refusing our gaze. She appears like a heaven-sent sex goddess among the ageing Peter Pans, though the artist recently described characters in one series as succubi: female demons. Is she dreaming these men or melting their faces to shadow?
