Jenny Saville Essay

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The third and final artist I wish to discuss in the essay is British artist Jenny Saville (b.1970) who paints figurative paintings most frequently of female bodies. Some of these figures are based on her own body and others are of distorted and fragmented people and limbs. “The flesh of the subjects is scarred with feminist inscriptions and seems to reveal a degree of self hatred.”(Judy Chicago and Edward Lucie-Smith 1999) She includes “unfinished” spaces in her paintings that are abstract, vertical lines cut through the massive canvas sizes he chooses to work with, blemishes that disfigure body parts are revealed to be clumps of paint.. “Ever since the introduction of feminist ideologies into the realm of art, several women artists have instigated…show more content…
He head is pulled backwards but she is still glancing slightly at the viewer who is looking at her from below. Looking at this figure from below gives it an even more immense dominance. A quote by the feminist writer Luce Irigaray is carved onto the surface of the paint backwards; “If we continue to speak in this sameness, speak as men have spoken for centuries, we will fail each other again.” This is a clear message from the artists that there is a need to change how the female body is viewed and what is expected of it. What is also truly shocking is the scale that “Propped” was made the canvas dimensions run around seven feet by six feet which truly makes the figure in the painting look intimidating and powerful. I believe this painting changes perceptions of the female body which has traditionally been seen as a passive object of male desire. Saville’s fleshy and slightly grotesque representation of the female nude does not agree with our societies and men’s fantasy of what a woman should be and in turn changes the view of people who have seen her

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