Three gallery shows of new work by veteran artists who happen to be women highlight their different ways and means of development, and the way they are taking new risks.
Autumn tends to be a great time in New York City’s art world. The weather can be superb. There’s a back-to-school excitement as galleries reopen, sometimes at new addresses, usually with new shows. Even having art fairs arrive inconveniently early this year, during Labor Day week, didn’t dampen things. As usual, much of the buzz of a new season derives from gallery solos which reveal individual artists making changes and taking new risks. Going to galleries is on one level a search for such signs of growth and the cultural optimism they engender. Three of the most exciting gallery shows right now present the latest efforts of well-known artists: Lisa Yuskavage in Chelsea, Mickalene Thomas on the Upper East Side and Alison Elizabeth Taylor in TriBeCa. We get to see what’s utmost on their minds as reflected in markedly different, and improved, work fresh out of the studio, often completed during the pandemic. All of which makes them very satisfying to visit and mull over, especially in the ways they deal with the lives of women.
I used to respect more than like Lisa Yuskavage’s work. Its eroticized Kewpie doll girls and pornographic tropes enveloped in a saccharine monochromatic atmosphere effectively conveyed the male inability to see women as anything but sex objects, as well as the damage this outlook visits upon both the see-er and seen. Yet the points the artist raised often seemed primarily conceptual and the greasy surfaces and exaggerated light seemed contrived, unpleasant.