WOMEN IN ART: JENNY SAVILLE

One artist that many painters seem to find very influential is Jenny Saville. Her work is very grotesque and unique making her opinions heard. For this post I will briefly discuss what I know about her and show you her work. 

Saville became quite famous at a young age while finishing up college. In her 20s she was creating huge pieces of the human figure. "(Flesh) is all things. Ugly, beautiful, repulsive, compelling, anxious, neurotic, dead, alive." which I feel perfectly sums up her work. Her pieces mainly show flesh and she has perfected an active way to paint it. 

Jenny Saville, Red Stare Head IV, 2006-11, oil on canvas, 99"x73"

"Fascinated by the endless aesthetic and formal possibilities that the materiality of the human body offers, Saville remits a highly sensuous and tactile impression of surface and mass in her monumental oil paintings. In the compelling Stare paintings she renders the contours and features of the face and the nuances of skin texture and color in strokes both bold and meticulous. Enlarging the facial features of her human subjects to a vast scale and rendering them in layer upon layer of paint, she imbues in them with a sense of mass and weight that is almost sculptural and at times wholly abstract. Intense pinks, reds, and blues erupt through pale skin tones, disclosing the internal workings of the painting like the flesh and blood of a living organism."

While Red Stare Head IV relates to her older paintings of hanging meat, she always painted figures in hopes to show how foreign and uncomfortable bodies can feel.

Jenny Saville, Propped, 1992, oil on canvas, 213cmx183cm

Her use of text and linework in throughout most of that certain collection in subtlety. But the underlying tones really brings almost a feminist feel to her pieces. There are tons of impressive pieces in this collection I highly suggest looking into because I can't even begin to put them all in here. Because of her interest in bodies and modifying she took some time and just observed plastic surgeons. This helped her to understand the mindset of the person getting something done and also why and how they went about it.

Her newer pieces were all based around Motherhood and she portrayed herself with her child. These newer pieces still have the same fantastic Saville skin tones and brushwork but also included more drawing and line work. The line work really pushes the idea of movement and how children are constantly wiggling and growing.

Jenny Saville, The Mothers, 2011, oil on canvas, 106"x86"

Ever since this collection we haven't seen much work out of Jenny Saville, but hopefully she is continuing working and creating these beautiful contemporary masterpieces.

Citations:
Red Stare Head IV and quotes: © Jenny Saville 2011. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery http://www.gagosian.com/artists/jenny-saville
Propped: http://www.saatchigallery.com/aipe/jenny_saville.htm