"There is a thing about beauty. Beauty is always associated with the male fantasy of what the female body is. I don’t think there is anything wrong with beauty. It’s just what women think is beautiful can be different. And there can be a beauty in individualism. If there is a wart or a scar, this can be beautiful, in a sense, when you paint it."
- Jenny Saville
The massive expanse of a fat naked woman's flesh in front of you shouldn't be appealing but in Jenny Saville's paintings it somehow is. My interest in the artist began in sixth form looking at her earlier work and how she challenged the typical aesthetics of female beauty, essentially by painting female subjects that were the exact opposite of those often idolised by media. Seeing Saville's work first hand at Modern Art, Oxford made me realise that books simply can not do the art work justice. Even when you read the dimensions of the canvases it's hard to visualise their vastness until you see the figures encompassing the whole wall from across the gallery. It's hard to imagine working so close to a painting for years when ultimately it is designed to be viewed from a distance.
Saville's work is paradoxically ugly but beautiful. It captures the contours of flesh through unblended and textural brush strokes and the paint is built up in layers as if she's sculpting the skin herself. I think the artwork relies partly on the shock factor upon the audience, perhaps a flesh carcass may not be your cup of tea, but there's no possibility that you can see this work and not be seriously impressed.
Images from Modern Art Oxford
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