Jenny Saville

'Complete an analytical review of Jenny Saville


Jenny Saville is an english painter 'known primarily for her large-scale paintings of obese women. She began studying in 1988 at an arts school in scotland. Saville was influenced by artists such as Cindy Sherman. With this as her influence she created work for her degree which would soon shape her whole career in art.
Saville creates her work in Oil painting: with never ending technological advances in art she resists the temptation to change or include other mediums into her work such as film. However she will rarely include the use of photography in her work. She uses photography mainly to take hundreds of pictures of her subject from all different angles as she prefers this to life drawings due to feeling that it 'helps her have the model of an idea in her hand.' When we look at the style of paintings that Jenny Saville creates and the medium she works in we can similarly compare her to the artist Lucian Freud. Her work is also influenced by the surgeons at work as she finds that you will see a lot of 'damage and adjusment' occuring to the human body. Watching the surgeons operating meant that she could begin to see 'paint as a matter.' For one painting it is known that she may use up to three hundred pots of paints instead of mixing them on the palettes as she works.
The subject Jenny Saville concentrates on when creating her art are bodies ' that manifest in something of our contemporary age.' When she says this it seems to relate to how she paints bodies that are in a 'state of in-betweeness.' Such as hermaphrodites and Transvestites which would've been unheard of around 30-40 years ago. As well as this she also regularly paints the trauma victims which means many of her image is include a lot of 'emotional violence' and hidden messages.
When looking at the work that she produces, i feel that she goes a lot deeper when compared to other artists. She will use cool blue tones when the body has come to an area with less blood flow and where the blood circulates more frequently she will add more tones of red to show this. This is something many artists do not take into consideration. Jenny Saville has learnt a lot from observing plastic surgery as well as looking at medical books to make sure she knew the correct details from bruising to the individual tones of the flesh.



Her painting of 'Hypen' which included 'grafter flesh sections' were created from observations and medical books. A strong love of painting and a high interest in the theory of feminism helped to inspire her with this painting. The painting is taken from a childhood picture of her and her sister suggesting that they are joined together just like siamese twins would be.



'Plan' is an image that was created by Saville in 1993.
In 1994 she had taken part in an exhibition at Saatchi Gallery; 'Young British Artists III.' It wasn't known at the time but this would soon make her a name in the industry. This self portrait soon became the 'signature image' at the exhibition. The image shows contour lines which seem to symbolise the lines made by a surgeon before they 'reconstruct' and get rid of skin seen to be undesirable by the patient. One thing that strikes me about this image is the amount of time she takes to put in such incredible detail itno the work. Where she is clutching her chest we can see where she has worked in every single vein and how the skin changes tone due to compression compared to parts of the body that aren't compressed.


Closed Contact A-D (1995)

This piece of work is a collaboration with photographer Glenn Luchford. This is one of the rare times when she reached out to experiment with photography when she had a break from painting. In these photos Saville doubles as the model for this series of images. When looking at these images and comparing to other works she has created i feel they come across with a more violent atmosphere. As she is having her body pushed against the glass. When in her other photos herself and her models seem to have a lot more freedom. Looking at these image i feel you can still tell she has created this piece of work as she has very much stuck to the same style as she would when she's paintings which come across with a strong feeling of emotional and physical pain.
When looking at Jenny Saville overall as an artist i feel that she causes a lot of controversy with her images. Her method of working will seem very 'old fashioned' when compared to the mediums contemporary artists use. However i think this works well when we look at the 'contemporary' topics that she paints.