“… She is a divinity, a star, which presides at all the conceptions of the brain of man; a glittering conglomeration of all the graces of Nature, condensed into a single being; the object of the keenest admiration and curiosity that the picture of life can offer its contemplator. She is not, I must admit, an animal whose component parts, correctly assembled, provide a perfect example of harmony; she is not even that type of pure beauty which the sculptor can mentally evoke in the course of his sternest meditations; no, this would still not be sufficient to explain her mysterious and complex spell.”[1]
This is Baudelaire's description of women in his essay, The painter of modern life, which is how Jenny Saville, "a painter of modern life," defines herself. But on the contrary, Saville's women are not sensual, they do not embody the classical contemporary western beauty, they are not like plastic dolls that society wants to inculcate as a symbol of perfection; Saville's women are fat, the subjects are represented as crude, they are true, they are dismissed, you can feel the flesh, you are not dispensed by their impudence. Saville broke with the traditional aesthetic norms of legibility and corporality. Born in Cambridge in 1970, she is a contemporary British painter, associated with the Young British Artist.
Saville's paintings are often
compared with the work of Lucian Freud (1922-2011), most probably for the same
crude way of depicting the average female form.
Although Saville admits the
comparison with Freud, her greatest impacts are Francis Bacon and Willem de
Kooning, and she has said the "marriage of Bacon’s figurative skills and de
Kooning’s painting skills would make the best painter who ever lived." [2]
She is one of the few contemporary artists using the classic technique of making art: painting. Although some contemporary critics may define her works démodé, that, indeed, makes her a special artist. Her passion for art and desire of being a painter have fluttered inside her since she was born. Saville won a six-month scholarship at the University of Cincinnati, where she states she became "interested in the malls, where you saw lots of big women. Big white flesh in shorts and T-shirts. It was good to see, because they had the physicality that I was interested in. "[3] She became very well known when Charles Saatchi 'discovered' and supported her, proposing she paint 18 canvases that would be subsequently exhibited in his gallery.
Her large-scale paintings are
so impacting, the bodies so big that sometimes they seem that even the canvas
isn't enough to contain them. Saville plays with the role of women, with their
bodies, with their femininity. Despite the fatness, her women are attractive,
one can almost smell the fragrance of their flesh, one can be totally immersed
in this world in which beauty is not a matter of weight.
 |
| “Plan” 1993, Oil on Canvas, 274.5 x 213.5 cm. The Saatchi Collection, London |
As a result of this observation-study, Saville creates a painting such as “Plan,” in which she draws the sign of liposuction (from ancient Greek, lipos = fat) on the body of yet another obese woman portrayed in her paintings.
But why is Saville so interested in fatness? What does she want to demonstrate transfiguring and exaggerating the female body? Can her work be considered a provocation to the canon of western beauty?
 |
| “Passage”, 2004, Oil on canvas, 336 x 290 cm |
In Saville’s works, one can
glimpse the same raw depiction that we can find in the brothels’ monotype that
Degas (1834-1917) depicted in the nineteenth century, just in the time in which
“the painter of modern life” was
born.
 |
"Room
in a Brothel", c. 1879
Monotype
in black ink on laid paper, 21 x 15.9 cm
Stanford
University Museum of Art
|
 |
|
"The Madam’s Name Day", ca.1879-80,
pastel over monotype, Musée Picasso, Paris.
|
The same women, the same flesh,
the same bodies opened to the viewer and ready to be judged. The same crudity
and beauty, loneliness, and melancholy.
Graceful impudence of all things
that are hidden in the depths of every woman, regardless of their weight and
age. Saville is defined as a
feminist. She certainly gave to all
these women she represents a strong character, with such an evident presence they
could make an empty room seem too visually populated. Saville’s world is unique, large,
predominant and spud-orate, she defends and carries the flag of fatness,
representing it in the most real and delicate way.
[1]
Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, (Phaidon Press, 1964)
[2] Artbank.com, Jenny Saville Biography. Retrieved on February 5, 2008.
[3] Ibid
