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Jenny Saville

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Jenny Saville
RA
Born
Jennifer Anne Saville

(1970-05-07)7 May 1970(age 54)
Cambridge,Cambridgeshire,England
EducationUniversity of Cincinnati,Glasgow School of Art
Known forPainting
MovementYoung British Artists
Relatives

Jennifer Anne SavilleRA(born 7 May 1970)[1]is a contemporary British painter and an original member of theYoung British Artists.[2]Saville works and lives inOxford,England[3]and she is known for her large-scale painted depictions ofnude women.Saville has been credited with originating a new and challenging method of painting the female nude and reinventing figure painting for contemporary art. Some paintings are of small dimensions, while other are of much larger scale.[4]Monumental subjects come from pathology textbooks that she has studied that informed her on injury to bruise, burns, and deformity.[5]John Graycommented: "As I see it, Jenny Saville's work expresses a parallel project of reclaiming the body from personality. Saville worked with many models who underwent cosmetic surgery to reshape a portion of their body. In doing that, she captures" marks of personality for the flesh "and together embraces how we can be the writers of our own lives."[6]

She is one of two women to have made the top 10 auction lots sold in 2023.[7]

Early life and education[edit]

Saville was born inCambridge,England.[2]Saville went to the Lilley and Stone School (nowThe Newark Academy) inNewark,Nottinghamshire,for her secondary education, later gaining her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree atGlasgow School of Art(1988–1992). She was then awarded a six-month scholarship to theUniversity of Cincinnatiwhere she enrolled in a course in women's studies.[8]Saville was exposed to gender political ideas and renowned feminist writers. During her time in Cincinnati, she saw a lot of big women in shorts and t-shirts. This was the kind of physicality that she found herself interested in. She partially credits her interest in big bodies toPablo Picasso,an artist that she sees as a painter that made his subjects solid and permanent.[9]

Career[edit]

At the end of Saville's undergraduate education, the leading British art collector,Charles Saatchi,saw her work at Clare Henry's Critics Choice exhibition at the Cooling Gallery in Cork St and purchased a painting. Her first series of paintings consisted of large scale portraits of Saville and other models.[10]He offered the artist an 18-month contract, supporting her while she created new works to be exhibited in theSaatchi Galleryin London. The collection,Young British Artists III,exhibited in 1994 with Saville's self-portrait,Plan (1993),as the signature piece.[11]Rising quickly to critical and public recognition and emerging as part of theYoung British Artists(YBA) scene, Saville has been noted for creating art through the use of a classical standard—figure painting, but with a contemporary approach.

Since her debut in 1992, Saville's focus has remained on the female body. She has stated, "I'm drawn to bodies that emanate a sort of state of in-betweenness:hermaphrodite,a transvestite, a carcass, a half-alive/half-dead head. "[12]In 1994, Saville spent many hours observingplastic surgeryoperations in New York City.[13]Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states and transgender patients.[14]Much of her work features distorted flesh, high-caliber brush strokes, and patches of oil colour, while others reveal the surgeon's mark of a plastic surgery operation or white "target" rings. Her paintings are usually much larger than life-size, usually six-by-six feet or more.[15]They are strongly pigmented and give a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin as well as the mass of the body. Saville's post-painterly style[16]has been compared to that ofLucian Freud[17]andRubens.

Album covers[edit]

In 1994, Saville's paintingStrategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face)appeared on the cover ofManic Street Preachers' third albumThe Holy Bible.[18]Saville's paintingStare(2005) was used for the cover of the band's 2009 albumJournal for Plague Lovers.[19]The top four UK supermarkets stocked the CD in a plain slipcase, after the cover was deemed "inappropriate".[20]The band'sJames Dean Bradfieldsaid the decision was "utterly bizarre", and commented: "You can have lovely shiny buttocks and guns everywhere in the supermarket on covers of magazines and CDs, but you show a piece of art and people just freak out".[20]The album cover art placed second in a 2009 poll forBest Art Vinyl.[21]

Recent work[edit]

In 2002, she collaborated with photographerGlen Luchfordto produce huge Polaroids of herself taken from below, lying on a sheet of glass. Luchford is a well-known fashion photographer who worked forGucci,Calvin Klein, and Prada. Saville wanted to use someone with Luchford's high fashion background to capture her interpretations of the female form.

In Saville's more recent work, she employs graphite, charcoal, and pastel to explore overlapping forms suggestive of underdrawings, movement, hybridity, and gender ambiguity.[22]Saville states, "If I draw through previous bodily forms in an arbitrary or contradictory way;...it gives the work a kind of life force orEROS.Destruction, regeneration, a cyclic rhythm of emerging forms ".[23]

Later, in 2018 Saville'sPropped (1992)sold atSotheby'sin London for £9.5 million, above its £3-£4 million estimate,[24]becoming the most expensive work by a living female artist sold at auction.[25]

Torso(2004–2005), oil on canvas

Representations of the body[edit]

Representations of the body is an important aspect of Jenny Saville's work. Saville's stylised nude portraits of voluminous female bodies have brought her international acclaim.[26]She attributes most of her style and subjects to this theme of representations. Savilles' workPropped (1992),which is the most expensive work sold at an auction house by a living female artist, has been described as "one of the undisputed masterpieces of theYoung British Artists"bySothebys' European head of Contemporary Art, Alex Branczik.[25]This piece is said to be so masterful because it is "the superlative self-portrait that shatters canonized representations of female beauty."[27]

In an interview for the Saatchi Gallery, Saville comments "I have to really work at the tension between getting the paint to have the sensory quality that I want and be constructive in terms of building the form of a stomach, for example, or creating the inner crevice of a thigh. The more I do it, the more the space between abstraction and figuration becomes interesting. I want a painting realism. I try to consider the pace of a painting, of active and quiet areas. Listening to music helps a lot, especially music where there's a hard sound and then soft breathable passages."[28]

Saville's art focuses on women's bodies as the predominant subject matter,[29]and is a far cry away from other works of the female form, which have traditionally objectified women.[24]She is more interested in the raw and unaltered female form,[24]and the valuable reactions of disgust which are generated when viewing her pieces.[30]Her body of work therefore challenges traditional representations of nude women and also the modern-day filtered and perfect body image, encouraged by social media.[29]Saville does this by focusing on the bumps, dimples, rolls and contours of women's bodies and flesh, representing some insecurities and imperfections, that have been excluded in depictions of nude women traditionally.[29]

Saville's work was included in the 2022 exhibitionWomen Painting Womenat theModern Art Museum of Fort Worth.[31]

Technique and color choices[edit]

Saville's technique uses small brushstrokes to build up the painting and soften the imaging. The finish of the painting is matte, but it does not look "dry".[32]She also uses interesting, muted colour combinations for her art pieces that create a soft atmosphere free of harshness with an intense subject and meaning behind it.[32]Other complementary analyzes have been proposed on the technique: While drawing upon a wide range of sources it is normal that a painting "capture a sense of motion and fluidity. These restless images provide no fixed point, but rather suggest the perception of simultaneous realities".Kenny Smith.[33]"She found a way to niche gender studies within a late flowering of the grand tradition of the swagger portrait... Saville's provocative twist was to extend the bravura technique and monumental scale of such painting to naked and isolated (or in some cases sardined) young women".David Cohen.[34]Saville works with oil paint, applied in heavy layers, becomes as visceral as flesh itself, each painted mark maintaining a supple, mobile life of its own. As Saville pushes, smears, and scrapes the pigment over her large-scale canvases.[35]Saville is also known for her use of massive canvases that allow the viewer to see the details and layering of oil paints to create her signature aesthetic of movement and abstract realism.[24]

Aesthetics and subject matter[edit]

Traditionally, Jenny Saville's nudes have been studied from the gender perspective defying "the traditional aspects of beauty and femininity. In fact, most of her nudes represent overweight or bruised women... constant struggle between the female body and the body ideals contemporary pop culture has been trying to force upon it" (Marilia Kaisar).[36]Meagher writes that Saville sees standards of "beauty and pleasure [as] deeply embedded within Western [culture]", yet, she constantly tries to challenge these assumptions of the body and beauty.[37]

Her nonconventional looks at beauty expands the traditional nude form into a way to comment on the body, gender politics, sexuality, and even self-realization. Her works often "depict distorted, fleshy, and disquieting female bodies" to provoke interest, confusion, questions, and excitement.[37]Saville’s luscious yet grotesque treatment of painted bodies have elicited comparisons to Lucian Freud. "I paint flesh because I'm human", she has said. "If you work in oil, as I do, it comes naturally. Flesh is just the most beautiful thing to paint."[38]"A confrontation with the dynamics of exposure... her exaggerated nudes point up, with an agonizing frankness, the disparity between the way women are perceived and the way that they feel about their bodies" (Suzie Mackenzie).[39]She plays upon the "ambiguity of embodiment" and what it means to be "feminine" or "beautiful" through the use of the distortion and "disgust".[37]This "aesthetic of disgust" pushed people to the uncomfortable and forced many into the shoes of countless women in the Western world, giving some the autonomy to decide their own standard of beauty beyond society.[37]The primary subject of all of Saville’s early works is the artist herself, and indeed throughout heroeuvreshe has almost exclusively painted female subjects.[27]Scholars like Loren Erdrich argue there is a direct link between the physical body, identity, and the self presented within Saville's subjects.[40]

Society shapes and seeks to control behavior, relationships, and power. Saville, however, breaks down the social conventions that encourage women to fit into limiting beauty standards. Saville's subject, non-idealized bodies, have been understood as superposition of mental and emotional mindsets: "if we could see through our skins our psychological injuries, then the process will be clear: every injury and excess is hiding from the surface (in every successfully avoided blushing) it goes to our inner body (where it avoids to be noticed)" (Luis Alberto Mejia Clavijo).[41]Through the mediation of paint, Saville restores beauty and subjectivity to bodies that have been in what is seen as grotesque.[32]In her own words: "A lot of women out there look and feel like that, made to fear their own excess, taken in by the cult of exercise, the great quest to be thin. The rhetoric used against obesity makes it sound far worse than alcohol or smoking, yet they can do you far more damage".[42]It is acknowledged that Saville performs "explorations of people that are both intimate and uncomfortable. Through detailed, frank and unapologetic investigations of the human body, dialogues occur between past and present, and are animated by questions of gender, suffering, and ambiguity" (Asana Greenstreet).[43]

From the beginning of her career, Saville has engaged in an intense exploration of the body and its representation. Saville borrows conventions from a long tradition in figure painting, whether in poses borrowed fromMadonna and Childpaintings byLeonardo da Vinci,the use of a colour palette reminiscent ofPeter Paul Rubens,or the gestural painting ofWillem de Kooningin hisWomanseries. Saville appropriates these techniques associated with male masters to show her own point of view as a woman.[44]

In 2004, Saville explored the idea of floating gender in her workPassage.Saville is quoted saying "With the transvestite I was searching for a body that was between genders. I had explored that idea a little in Matrix. The idea of floating gender that is not fixed. The transvestite I worked with has a natural penis and false silicone breasts. Thirty or forty years ago this body couldn't have existed and I was looking for a kind of contemporary architecture of the body. I wanted to paint a visual passage through gender – a sort of gender landscape."[28]

Select works[edit]

  • Branded(1992). Oil painting on a 7 ft × 6 ft (2.1 m × 1.8 m) canvas. In this painting, Saville painted her own face onto an obese female body. The size of the breasts and midsection is very exaggerated. The figure in the painting is holding folds of her skin which she is seemingly showing off.[45]
  • Plan(1993). Oil painting on a 9 ft × 7 ft (2.7 m × 2.1 m) canvas. This painting depicts a nude female figure with contour lines marked on her body, much like that of a topographical map. Saville said of this work: "The lines on her body are the marks they make before you have liposuction done to you. They draw these things that look like targets. I like this idea of mapping of the body, not necessarily areas to be cut away, but like geographical contours on a map. I didn't draw on to the body. I wanted the idea of cutting into the paint. Like you would cut into the body. It evokes the idea of surgery. It has lots of connotations."[46]
  • Closed Contact(1995–1996). She collaborated with artist Glen Luchford to create a series of C-prints depicting a larger female nude lying on plexiglass. The photographs were taken from underneath the glass and depict the female figure very distorted.[46]
  • Hybrid(1997). Oil painting on a 7 ft × 6 ft (2.1 m × 1.8 m) canvas. In this painting, the image looks much like patchwork. Different components of four female bodies are incorporated together to create a unique piece.[46]
  • Fulcrum(1999). Oil painting on an8+1⁄2ft × 16 ft (2.6 m × 4.9 m) canvas. In this painting, three obese women are piled on a medical trolley. Thin vertical strips of tape have been painted over and then pulled off the canvas, thus creating a sense of geometric measure at odds with the mountainous flesh.[47]
  • Hem(1999). Oil painting on a 10 ft × 7 ft (3.0 m × 2.1 m) canvas. This painting depicts a very large nude female with lots of subtle textures implied. The bits of orange showing through the stomach add a glow, while the figure's left side is covered with thick white paint as if by a plaster cast, and her pubic area, painted pink over dark brown, resembles carved painted wood.[47]
  • Ruben's Flap(1998–1999). Oil painting on a 10 ft × 8 ft (3.0 m × 2.4 m) canvas. This painting depicts Saville herself; she multiplies her body, letting it fill the canvas space as it does in other works, but what is interesting is the fragmentation. Decisive lines divide the body into square planes, and it appears that she is trying to hide the nakedness with the different planes. Saville seems to be struggling to convince herself that the parts of her body are beautiful.[48]
  • Matrix(1999). Oil painting on a 7 ft × 10 ft (2.1 m × 3.0 m) canvas. In this painting, Saville depicts a reclining nude figure with female breasts and genitalia, but with a masculine, bearded face. The genitalia is thrust to the foreground, making it much more of a focus in the picture than the gaze. The arms and legs of the figure are only partly seen, the extremities lying outside the boundary of the picture. The whole is painted in fairly naturalistic fleshy tones.[49]
The Saatchi Gallery opened in 1985

Exhibitions[edit]

Other activities[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^Grant, Catherine M. (2017).Jenny Saville.doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T096964.ISBN978-1-884446-05-4.Retrieved21 October2022.{{cite book}}:|website=ignored (help)
  2. ^abRoyal Academy of Arts:Jenny Saville RA | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts,accessdate: 29 August 2014
  3. ^"Jenny Saville".Gagosian Gallery.Retrieved15 December2012.
  4. ^Saville.New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications Inc. 2005. pp. 26–29.ISBN978-0-8478-2757-2.
  5. ^Saville.New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications Inc. 2005. p. 11.ISBN978-0-8478-2757-2.
  6. ^Saville.New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications Inc. 2005. pp. 8–9.ISBN978-0-8478-2757-2.
  7. ^Network, Artnet Gallery (5 March 2024)."5 Quick Takeaways From the Artnet Intelligence Report".Artnet News.Retrieved9 March2024.
  8. ^Calvocoressi, Richard (2018).Jenny Saville.New York: Rizzoli International Publications. p. 19.ISBN9780847862900.
  9. ^"Jenny Saville BiographyArchived13 March 2008 at theWayback Machine".Artbank.com. Retrieved on 5 February 2008.
  10. ^Grant, Catherine (2000).Saville, Jenny.doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T096964.ISBN978-1-884446-05-4.Retrieved2 March2022.{{cite book}}:|website=ignored (help)
  11. ^"SAVILLE, Jenny". Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 24 September 2015. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/benezit/B00300069>.
  12. ^Grey, John (2005).Saville.New York: Rizzoli. p. 124.ISBN0847827577.
  13. ^"Jenny Saville Biography, Works of Art, Auction Results – Invaluable".Invaluable.com.
  14. ^Schama, Simon. "Jenny Saville".The Saatchi Gallery, 2005. Retrieved on 6 February 2008.
  15. ^Cohen, Alina (11 October 2018)."Jenny Saville Changed the Way We View the Female Form".Artsy.Retrieved25 February2021.
  16. ^Hudson, Mark (24 June 2014)."Jenny Saville: 'I like the down and dirty side of things'".The Telegraph.Retrieved6 August2019.
  17. ^Cooke, Rachel (9 June 2012)."Jenny Saville: 'I want to be a painter of modern life, and modern bodies'".The Guardian.London.
  18. ^Middles, Mick. "Manic Street Preachers".London: Omnibus Press, January 2000. p.136.ISBN0-7119-7738-0
  19. ^Rogers, Georgie & O'Doherty, Lucy. "Supermarkets cover up Manics CD".BBC News,2009. Retrieved on 28 June 2009.
  20. ^abRogers, Georgie; O'Doherty, Lucy (14 May 2009)."BBC News | Entertainment | Supermarkets Cover Up Manics CD".BBC News.Retrieved26 September2012.
  21. ^"Best Art Vinyl 2009 Winners".Art Vinyl.Archived fromthe originalon 6 January 2010.Retrieved1 November2010.
  22. ^Calvocoressi, Richard (2018).Jenny Saville.New York: Rizzoli International Publications. p. 24.ISBN9780847862900.
  23. ^Calvocoressi, Richard (2018).Jenny Saville.New York: Rizzoli International Publications Inc. pp. 21–22.ISBN9780847862900.
  24. ^abcdCohen, Alina (11 October 2018)."Jenny Saville Changed the Way We View the Female Form".Artsy.Retrieved29 February2020.
  25. ^abFreeman, Nate (6 October 2018)."Jenny Saville Is Now the World's Most Expensive Living Female Artist".Artsy.Retrieved9 March2019.
  26. ^"Jenny Saville | artnet".www.artnet.com.Retrieved29 February2020.
  27. ^ab"The Groundbreaking Self-Portrait That Launched Jenny Saville's Career".Sotheby's.Archived fromthe originalon 4 February 2019.
  28. ^ab"Jenny Saville – Artist's Profile".The Saatchi Gallery.Retrieved29 February2020.
  29. ^abcSotheby's (13 February 2019)."Jenny Saville and the Beauty of Individualism".Sotheby's.
  30. ^Meagher, Michelle (2003)."Jenny Saville and a Feminist Aesthetics of Disgust".Hypatia.18(4): 23–41.doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2003.tb01411.x.ISSN0887-5367.S2CID145427602.
  31. ^"Women Painting Women".Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.Retrieved16 May2022.
  32. ^abcRobinson, Hilary, "Approaching Painting through Feminine Morphology", "Paragraph 25, no. 3", 2002
  33. ^Kenny Smith (26 March 2018),Jenny Saville’s work is put in the frame in ScotlandScottish Field.
  34. ^David Cohen (6 October 2011),"The Dutchmen’s Heir: Jenny Saville at Gagosian"Archived18 October 2018 at theWayback Machine.Art Critical.
  35. ^"Jenny Saville".Gagosian.12 April 2018.Retrieved29 February2020.
  36. ^Marilia Kaisar (21 May 2018),"An analysis of the feminist nude through the work of Jenny Saville"Medium.
  37. ^abcdMeagher, Michelle, "Jenny Saville and a Feminist Aesthetics of Disgust".Hypatia18, no. 4, 2003
  38. ^"Jenny Saville".artnet.Retrieved29 February2020.
  39. ^Suzie Mackenzie (22 October 2005),"Under the skin",The Guardian.
  40. ^Erdrich, Loren, "I Am a Monster: The Indefinite and the Malleable in Contemporary Female Self-Portraiture",Circa,no. 121, 2007, doi:10.2307/25564831.
  41. ^Luis Alberto Mejia Clavijo (29 May 2013),Jenny Saville: Individual external bruises of collective internal injuriesContemporary Art Theory.
  42. ^Hunter Davies (1 March 1994),"This is Jenny and this is her plan",Independent.
  43. ^Asana Greenstreet (3 July 2012),"Jenny Saville at Modern Art Oxford",Aesthetica Magazine.
  44. ^"Jenny Saville Paintings, Bio, Ideas".The Art Story.Retrieved29 February2020.
  45. ^"Jenny Saville – Feminism and Self-Portraiture".Art1eproject.wetpaint.com. Archived fromthe originalon 7 April 2013.Retrieved17 February2013.
  46. ^abc"Gallery of the Work of Jenny Saville".Employees.oneonta.edu.Retrieved17 February2013.
  47. ^abSmith, Roberta (15 October 1999)."ART IN REVIEW; Jenny Saville".The New York Times.
  48. ^"Jenny Saville".ArtForum.1999. Archived fromthe originalon 26 October 2008.
  49. ^"Jenny Saville: Destroyer of False Fetishes (Fine Art Year One. January 2009.)".theshutteredroom. 8 July 2011.Retrieved17 February2013.
  50. ^"Evening Standard Website".23 August 2012.Retrieved21 October2015.
  51. ^"Modern Art Oxford website shop exhibition poster Jenny Saville 2012".Archived fromthe originalon 6 March 2022.Retrieved21 October2015.
  52. ^"Ashmolean Museum exhibition Titian to Canaletto Jenny Saville Drawing".Ashmolean website.Retrieved21 October2015.
  53. ^"Jenny Saville – April 14 – July 9, 2016".Gagosian.Retrieved5 October2016.
  54. ^"Jason Rosenfeld, Jenny Saville: Ancestors | Gagosian Gallery".brooklynrail.org.5 June 2018.Retrieved23 July2018.
  55. ^Sawa, Dale Berning (25 March 2018)."Tacita Dean and Jenny Saville lead strong female presence at Edinburgh art festival".The Guardian.Retrieved30 March2018.
  56. ^Daniel Cassady (16 November 2022),Gagosian Forms Star-Studded Board of Directors, Offering a Glimpse at the Gallery’s FutureARTnews.

Notes[edit]

  • Jenny Saville,Organized by Cheryl Brutvan, Texts by Cheryl Brutvan and Nicholas Cullinan, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, 2011.

External links[edit]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jenny_Saville&oldid=1232858758"