description: In 1989, hurting for work, Lisa Yuskavage took a job teaching watercolor to continuing education students at Cooper Union. No expert in the technique, she figured she could wing it since she had an MFA in painting. But her very serious women students, most of them evening painters (the New York equivalent of the Sunday painter), were zealous about technique and quickly caught on to her ruse. Desperate to keep the job, Yuskavage went out and bought The Art of Watercolor by Charles Le Clair, took it back to her studio, and taught herself technique. And she became very good. In response to her students' constant requests to see her own watercolor work, and still trying to keep the job, she began a series of works meant to satisfy this very particular audience of women. They wanted flowers, and flowers they got--but not just flowers. In keeping with Yuskavage's personal themes, they got Tit Heaven: a lush series of watercolors depicting blossoms in full pastel hues, with the occasional nipple in between the buds, a small sign of the woman being suffocated underneath the bouquets.~Tit Heaven, a journal filled with subversive watercolors born of necessity, invites the reader to become the writer. Blank pages filled with gold lines offer a space to record whatever gets recorded in a journal: dreams, grocery lists, haiku, quotes, doodles, daily schedules and memories. Nevermind those art books that tell you what to think about the art inside; here the owner of the book determines the meaning, influenced, however directly or indirectly, by Yuskavage's watercolors themselves. Just like the journal you had as girl--but not quite. The engine of Yuskavage's art is plainly her own sexual anxiety, which provides a surpisingly rich source of inspiration. --Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker Hardcover, 7 x 9 in./144 pgs / 48 color 0 BW0 duotone 0 ~ Item D20337
title: Lisa Yuskavage: Tit Heaven
titlecomplete: Lisa Yuskavage: Tit Heaven
ratings_count: 3