The Anatomy of Painting
The National Portrait Gallery devotes most of its lower floor to the work of Jenny Saville, the Glasgow School graduate who shot to fame on graduation when she was commissioned by Charles Saatchi to make new work for his London gallery.
“Who else was going to give a 22-year-old a huge gallery and say ‘make a 21-foot triptych’. I was lucky.”
Saville has amply fulfilled the early promise she showed. Propped, a large nude portrait of herself perched awkwardly on a stool, is among the works that greet you at the entrance to this highly acclaimed show but if landscapes of flesh are not to your liking, best visit the permanent collection.
The vast nudes give way to a room I assumed was portraits of ladies having cosmetic surgery – a subject Saville studied in New York – because there was a lot of anguish and blood in the faces but they turned out to be just portraits. They are unmistakably by the hand of Saville, but along with many of her portraits they are also in some sense selfies. It’s the mouths – whether they are of children or
women – and eyes – it’s Saville’s mouth and eye, which is disconcerting and a bit formulaic.
The show includes less well-known drawings, which unlike the paintings are relatively small – apart from Pieta, her tribute to Michelangelo’s Deposition, a monumental study. There are sketches of children playing on a beach, a couple of small portraits and many studies of heavily pregnant women holding children. As with the paintings, Saville mixes her media with huge confidence, using pencil, pastel, charcoal, red chalk and acrylic with verve and confidence. Saville has been compared to Peter Paul Rubens and is seen as a successor to the great Lucien Freud.
