For viewers, it's like being bopped with a bladder by a clown who turns out to be Immanuel Kant's smarter sibling. It can wear you out with unconsummated pleasure. I swooned at Yuskavage's cunning light effects in a painting called Honeymoon. Riveting is the tiniest flick of a highlight on a huge, upturning, purple nipple. Yuskavage's figures broadcast crazed sexual signals, but they are too bizarrely synthetic to be even remotely pornographic.
Arousal is another content, like loathing and beauty, that raises a mysterious rumpus just offstage.
Not only nipples perk violently. So do those noses. Meanwhile, the characters radiate wistful vulnerability. They seem nice sorts who have sexuality as others have the Ebola virus. Sex goes click-clack like a Japanese Transformer toy and stomps over everybody's peace of mind, not to mention each morning's front pages.