Identity and Gender

For identity I’m looking at Jenny Saville. She is one of the female artists of the late-20th century who has truly reinvented the self-portrait. Her work raise questions about accepted ideals of beauty in fine art and life. No longer is the self-portrait confined to the values of society. Instead, the modern self-portrait is unrestricted in vision and form. Saville definitely breaks any boundaries meant to withhold women from exploring all parts of their self-identities she challenges the male fantasy of the perfect body and opens doors to alternative notions of beauty.

Saville fights society’s ideal of the perfect body by showing her own enlarged and distorted body, which is the opposite of the thin models and women we see on the covers of magazines. In many paintings, she uses her own head and face and the body of an obese woman. Most of her paintings and photographs have the body covering the entirety of the canvas, and sometimes spilling over the edges, this adds to the drama of viewing the human body’s flesh and imperfections. These disturbing enlarged and distorted views of the human body, forces the viewer to reflect on their own self-image and distorted views and emotions about their own body. She creates emotion by filling the canvas with raw flesh.

The image above is an perfect example of the freedom of the modern artist to explore the reality of the female body. No longer is the female body an object to view; it has become a vehicle to express ideas and emotions and to ignite introspection about the viewers own ideas and emotions surrounding body image.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/jenny_saville.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2005/oct/22/art.friezeartfair2005