The shock value of Sarah Lucas still hasn’t worn off

APOLLO MAGAZINE
By Digby Warde-Aldam

Christ You Know It Ain’t Easy (2003), Sarah Lucas. Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London; © Sarah Lucas

Sarah Lucas has never been one to leave an audience indifferent. Back in the 1990s, she earned a reputation as the gobbiest of her contemporaries, an artist who out-swore, out-smoked and out-grossed even her pal Damien Hirst. Nevertheless, even erstwhile YBAs can become respectable if they last long enough. The great surprise is that Lucas, now the subject of a show at the New Museum in New York, acquits herself rather a lot more convincingly than many of her supposedly more cerebral contemporaries. The greatest surprise here is quite how fresh Lucas’s approach to making art seems. At times, you can get the impression that she represents the missing art-historical link between Louise Bourgeois and a younger generation of artists, including Laure Prouvost, Pauline Curnier Jardin and Michael Dean. [More]