An Analytical Review on the Work of Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville is an English Painter with a very bizarre interest in her painting subjects. She paints trauma victims, transsexuals, transvestites and surgery patients. Some of her work is of slaughtered pigs and of women pressed awkwardly against glass sheets.                          

            My opinion of ‘Closed Contact #13’, with the distressed woman squashed against the glass, is torn because it’s interesting and makes you stop and look, however it’s awkward to look at because she has physically distorted the sitter against the glass sheet. I feel that Saville sees the world in a different way to others and that she may be trying to show her views on people through her work. As I mentioned before, she does portraits of trauma victims, people that have just been through surgery and people about to have liposuction along with transsexuals. For this reason she could be portraying that people never think they are beautiful enough and are trying to change their appearance all the time to become the stereotypically ‘perfect’ person the media wants us to be. In the picture, she could be trying to put across the message that all this fiddling with our appearance could in fact be ruining us.

            The blue background works well with the colouring of the sitter where her skin isn’t pressed so hard against the glass, she has red/pink tones which contrast nicely with the pale blue background. She usually works with larger women because she likes the shapes their bodies provide and finds them much more interesting, this woman is an exception to that as she is not large, but her posture and how she has been so awkwardly pressed against this glass provides very interesting shapes and textures throughout this picture. To me, the way this woman has one eye open and is looking right into the camera is a way of saying help. She looks like she is incredibly uncomfortable and that makes me, as a viewer, feel uncomfortable too. The more I look at this piece, the more emotion it stirs in me and it makes it harder to look.

Her piece ‘Rosetta’ is another interesting painting. I really like the way she has distressed the paint throughout the whole thing. However, the thing I like most about this painting is the colour and the splatter around her cheek, which is why I used this painting’s colour scheme to recreate my own hand in my Life Drawing sketchbook. The way the sitter’s eyes seem to focus on slightly different points make it seem as though she may be either distant minded or perhaps blind, which is suggested by the bland colouring too. This woman seems troubled, perhaps, once again, something bad has happened to this poor woman. It seems apparent in the way that she looks distracted and her expression is pained.

            I like how the colour blue has been used throughout. The use of it in the background brings out the appearance of it in her eyes. The paint looks like it has been smudged using a finger, I used this technique while recreating my hand as I mentioned earlier. I found it very difficult at first but slowly got used to it, however I am amazed at how much precision and detail Saville has managed to get into this painting. The paint looks very think and, therefore, would be harder to smudge across a canvas as she has. I really admire her techniques and way of working and look forward to trying to work in a messier way as she does.

Another subject that looks as though they need help is the sitter in the portrait ‘Reverse’. I like how the oil paint is distressed along the canvas instead of smooth strokes, but they are still very controlled. The colours of this piece are very warm and angry. To me, they show pain and danger. Because of how her right cheek droops towards the floor, we can tell that she is lying down against something reflective. The way she stares blankly at Jenny as she paints looks almost as if she is unconscious or even dead. This idea is enforced by how she has used red paint around her face, which could lead viewers to assume it is blood; returning to the idea that the colours show pain. I like the way that the painting has been painted, but I once again don’t like what it’s about. The image is awkward to look at and each viewer could come to a different conclusion as to what has happened to this woman. It looks like she is covered in blood and as though she has been beaten from the way her lip lifts oddly. While her painting shows the side of people we try not to think about, I can’t help feeling she is being a little insensitive about this subject. Which ever the case, she still makes a large amount of money and publicity by doing these pieces and perhaps earning from someone else’s misfortune isn’t the right thing to do.

I feel that Jenny Saville’s work is, at best, disturbing. I enjoy looking at the techniques she uses and like the possibility that there is a deeper meaning to her paintings because it makes them easier to look at for me.