Lisa Yuskavage: 'People take me too seriously'

Lisa Yuskavage gave a talk yesterday at the New School for the Public Art Fund. She showed slides of her work since college and how her work evolved from somehwat precious, quiet paintings about light to big, outrageous canvases of caricatured naked women. She talked about the breakthrough moment when she had her first New York show in 1990 and actually hated the work she put up. "I remember thinking 'oh my god my work sucks'," she said. She took a year off from painting but came back with the kinds of canvases she's so well known for now. She talked about how her breakthrough involved thinking of herself as the master of the figures she created, and how she took great pleasure in being cruel to them. She likened her new painting style to Dennis Hopper's gas-snorting sadist in the movie "Blue Velvet." Here are some of the choice quotes from her talk. "It was as if I switched places, now I was the top and painting was the bottom" On not understanding when people talk about her "technique": "Every way I start a painting is different and every way I end a painting is different." "I couldn't stand...