Lisa Yuskavage: Babie Brood, Small Paintings 1985-2018

Babie Brood is the first survey of Lisa Yuskavage's small-scale paintings, a body of work made alongside the large canvases she is best known for.

The small paintings, drawn from the artist's imagination, live models, maquettes, and found and staged photographs, work through the same methodical exploration of how her images get made and where they come from, some are studies for larger paintings, others revisit existing compositions, and others exist only at this intimate scale, on formats including stretched and unstretched linen, canvas board, wood, and paper. David Zwirner Books published the 192-page hardcover in 2019, reproducing the paintings at actual size, to document Yuskavage's 2018 exhibition at David Zwirner, New York. Jarrett Earnest contributes an essay tracing her early influences and the recurring themes across her work.

Yuskavage (b. 1962) has painted exaggerated, sexualized female figures in saturated, theatrical color since the early 1990s, drawing on sources from pin-up illustration to Renaissance painting to unsettle the line between objectification and empathy in how the body is depicted. Babie Brood's smaller, more experimental format gives a closer view of the working methods behind the larger paintings that established her reputation.