The Anatomy of Painting, Jenny Saville‘s retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery was one of the must-see shows of the summer for anyone interested in painting.
The exhibition covers her career from early works including this piece below, Propped, one of her graduate show paintings. It was originally displayed opposite a mirror to enable the viewer to read the text from French feminist writer Luce Irigaray: “if we continue to speak in this sameness – speak as men have spoken for centuries, we will fail each other”.
This statement is, I believe, key to understanding her work. She paints her experience, her point of view.
Her draftsmanship and mastery of oil paint shows an intense study of the Grand Masters.
You see references to the Madonna and child tradition but showing the reality of wriggling uncontrolled little bodies in a way not presented in this medium before.
Grand Masters are of course not her only influences: the spirit of Willem de Kooning is very strong here.
I found this piece very moving, even before reading the title, Aleppo.
Her most recent work below explores the unsettling fragmentation and distortion of the digital world we now live in. It doesn’t move me in the same way but I’m always interested to see what she does.
