Reading Response 5

This article talks about the Scottish artist, Jenny Saville. She graduated from the Glasglow School of Art in 1992 and has since been one of the most complex figurative painters in the world. She was discovered when an art collector came across her graduation exhibition and instantly fell in love with her work. Her paintings usually have ambiguous subject matters, large scales, and mainly consist of nude women's bodies. Saville says that she likes to provoke discomfort, fascination, repulsion, and attraction, sometimes all within the same piece. She is very interested in the construction of genders and manipulation of the human body and is heavily influenced by feminist theory. One thing that she does that is considered a "contemporary subject" is the highlighting and celebration of larger, more unappreciated bodies. Bodies that are not usually recognized as beautiful in a modern society. What i found most interesting about Saville's work is that she not only displayed construction of the piece through her energetic brush strokes, but also would incorporate bodies, such as the one in her piece "Plan," that were marked up in a way in which a woman would be before having plastic surgery to enhance themselves. The countless ways in which one can manipulate and contort their body was what drove Saville to some of her most popular works. She also talks about how nowadays, there are so many different options one can select when describing their gender. It's like a spectrum from male to female and everything in between. Saville says that when she began creating these works, this concept hadn't arouse in society yet. One of my favorite ideas that she explains is how she thinks of "paint as liquid flesh." She came up with this idea when she was pregnant, a time when her body was massively changing and growing. She also tried to replicate that on her canvas. She tries to make art that sparks controversy and debate in viewers' heads and I think that is very admirable.