13.12.10.

Lucian Freud in comparison to Jenny Saville.

Today i was doing more research on Jenny Saville for my presentation and i came across a British painter called Lucian Freud, born on 8th December 1922. I feel that they both have a similarity in painting technique as they both use oil paints and their skills. Saville tends to work in large-scale, whilst Freud works in a well smaller scale. 

Like Freud, Saville is exploring the connection of body and soul. The physical weight sensed in a figurative style and the inflictions enacted on Saville’s figures both allude to the woundings of the consciousness and the hugeness of existence crises in modern and contemporary human beings.

Jenny Saville Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face) 1996

This is one of Saville's piece called "Strategy" it is an oil painting of a woman in three different views. To view this painting in a gallery, in it's large-scale form, would be over-powering in a way. The overweight woman only wearing her underwear, looking down on you as if you were an ant and she’s about to step on you, can be quite frightening. 

Lucian Freud Benefits Supervisor Sleeping - 1995

Compared to Freud’s painting, where as you can see in the image, you can see people’s heads in comparison to the scale of the painting, isn’t as loading and large-scaled as Saville’s. Even the models in these paintings even look-a-like. They both use a mild, calm palette of yellow, white, brown to create the shadowing beneath the loose amount of flesh. 

The posture these models are in, emphasizes their body mass and flesh. Saville has captured the woman from below whilst Freud has taken it in a completely different matter by displaying the model on a sofa. With her legs off the floor and overlapping, whilst one arm is resting on the back of the sofa and the other is clenching underneath the model's right breast. Making the stomach and chest the main view point. 

Both Saville and Freud emphasize their flesh by not only the colour tones but also what they are wearing (or not wearing) and they body language. For once, Saville has captured this woman wearing underwear, I don't really know the answer of why but to me the strap on the underwear emphasizes the large stomach because it is overflowing, bulging out. And in Freud's piece, because she is lying on her side on the sofa, her stomach bulge has weighed down, like gravity, emphasizing the amount.

9.12.2010. JENNY SAVILLE - ugly art?

Would you hang a painting of an obese woman on your living room wall?

Jenny Saville, “Plan” 1993. Oil on canvas

 In 1994, Jenny moved to New York City where she managed to spend long hours observing the work of a plastic surgeon. She look many photographs whilst standing in on cosmetic surgeries and liposuctions, by being able to achieve this she gained a better understanding of the human body.

Jenny Saville is one of my favourite artists. She was born in Cambridge, 1970 and is an English painter who is best known for her large scale paintings of women.

Branded, 1992

Jenny Saville gained her degree at Glasgow School of Art (1988-1992), and was then awarded a six month scholarship to the University of Cincinnati, where she states that she 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.”

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Saville’s focus has always been on the human form, how it can be represented and people with deformations or disease. Much of her work sees distorted flesh, high caliber brush strokes and patches of oil colour, whilst others combine the surgeons mark of a plastic surgery operation.

To me, Jenny's work is beautiful, even though she does portrays obese women in a horrifying way. The views of which the audience has to see these obese women can have a different effect completely. If you're viewing a piece that is face on then you see the model as it's true form. However, if you view it like the first painting, then your views are distorted, the women looks out of proportion.

During her end of year university show, Charles Saatchi purchased all of her artworks and commissioned her for the next few years. Saville was very interested in the flesh of the human form and observed many plastic surgery operations before collaborating with photographer Glen Luchford.

Christy Turlington / Calvin Klein ad (photographer Glen Luchford)

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The style of British fashion photographer and film director Glen Luchford is influenced by his love of cinema. For creating evocative and cinematic images he prefers working in studio using elaborate lightning sets.