.jpg)
Birth of Venus, 1485
Oil on canvas
172.5 x 278.5cm
Links
1. About the painting and influences
2. Uffizi Museum info
3. Humanism and Neoplatonism
Propped, 1992
Oil on canvas
213.5 x 183cm
Links
1. Article 1
2. Independent newspaper article on Saville - Propped
3. Re-invention of the beautiful
4. "Branded"
Links
1. Article 1
2. Independent newspaper article on Saville - Propped
3. Re-invention of the beautiful
4. "Branded"
"Propped was the
last piece I did for my degree show. And the quote is from a French feminist
writer. I wanted the idea of a female body that is put on a pedestal to look
at, to observe and it is almost like a bird the way I have painted it with the
heel shoes and the connotation that brings in the language of women as birds or
chicks."
Jenny Saville
The French text carved in reverse, to imply the self scrutiny of looking into a mirror, translates,
“if we continue to speak in
this sameness, speak as men have spoken for centuries, we will fail each other
again”
By Feminist writer, Luce
Irigaray
"There was "immense
conviction" in making these pictures, she says, and an element of
self-loathing. "There is in everybody. We are taught to judge ourselves
from a very young age, to groom ourselves." And this creates a neurosis
for women, she says. "You see this dichotomy in women's magazines all the
time: an article on breast cancer - empowering; an article on skin products
that make you look younger - neurotic."
"More influential, more
enduring in her work, is the experience of sitting in on plastic surgery
operations. You realise something about the flesh, she says, when you see a
surgeon put his hand through a woman's breast. Or smell the burning of a facial
peel. You realise that the flesh is everything. "It's all things. Ugly,
beautiful, repulsive, compelling, anxious, neurotic, dead, alive." And it
is nothing. "Eventually we expel ourselves. We rust away. Our own body
rejects us. I don't find that tragic."
No comments:
Post a Comment