Lisa Yuskavage's large scale, enigmatic, and acerbic-colored paintings complicate how we view their female subjects. These women are mostly rendered either nude in a youthful, cartoonish manner with the curvaceous bodies and voluptuous breasts of soft porn, or as senescent—overly clothed in long dresses and turbans, suggesting babushkas or Mormons. Mainly, Yuskavage employs the former treatment as these paintings' subjects and the latter as figures in the distant realms of her landscapes.
These nymphets are mostly preoccupied with the sensuality of sexual provocation and the act of eating. In "Afternoon Feeding" (2011), one nude feeds round, shiny fruit to another. The objects (perhaps oversized, multicolored grapes) are only decidedly half as large as the feeder's breasts and about the same size as the areola of the girl being fed. This act of assisted eating could not be more sexually charged or maternal, which is odd considering the matrons of the background look on, disconnected and uninvolved with the activity taking place in the foreground.arge scale, enigmatic, and acerbic-colored paintings complicate how we view their female subjects. These women are mostly rendered either nude in a youthful, cartoonish manner with the curvaceous bodies and voluptuous breasts of soft porn, or as senescent—overly clothed in long dresses and turbans, suggesting babushkas or Mormons. Mainly, Yuskavage employs the former treatment as these paintings' subjects and the latter as figures in the distant realms of her landscapes.