Oxford well and truly embraces its newest artist resident,
Jenny Saville, by playing host at Modern Art to her first solo exhibition in a
public gallery and at the same time exhibiting two of her new pieces in the
Renaissance room at the Ashmolean Museum.
Jenny Saville is blessed with an enormous amount of
talent. The combination of her drawing
skills, understanding of how paint behaves and incredible painting abilities
really are quite awe inspiring. Her
enormous canvases are testament to a self-assurance in both subject matter and execution
that only someone possessed of such talent could afford to have.
The exhibition catalogue quotes Willem de Kooning who said
flesh was the reason oil paint was invented and there is plenty of both on
display here. Saville’s flesh is bruised,
blooded, scarred and post-operative, but it is still beautiful. Her paintings deliver a double dose of
aesthetic pleasure. Viewed up close they
become an abstract landscape of virtuoso brushwork - broad sweeping strokes
dance alongside gentle stippling and spattering, impasto oil both battles and
compliment s against smooth gloss enamel.
From a distance the combination of their sheer size with the violence of
the subject matter demand a contemplation and reverence that much contemporary
art is unable, or unwilling to aspire to.
The glazed-eyed, anaesthetised face of Reverse (2002) stares out blankly, a woman lay prone on an operating
table after the surgeon’s knife and acid peel have worked their ‘magic’. At the same time this could easily be a
painting of a discarded corpse laid out on the stainless steel morgue table, a
victim of criminal violence and waiting for another type of surgeon’s knife, for
a post-mortem. The paint almost oozes
off the canvas.
Early paintings such as Trace
(1993) and Fulcrum (1997-99),
completed while Saville was in her early twenties show the blossoming of her
early talent. Now aged forty two, her
paintings continue to show a sureness of hand.
Torso II (2004-05) is yet
another tour de force. In fact all the
paintings on display in this exhibition pack a very powerful punch. That said, I have to admit at being
disappointed with her most recent mother and child studies and Leonardo
reproductions, which seem lazy and predictable in their depiction. Without question these drawings are as skilfully
executed as her paintings and the blend and intricacy of the mark making within
them is also a feast for the eyes. But while
I completely understand that the impact of motherhood fundamentally changes the
focus of the majority of women who give birth and that nurturing their children
becomes an all-encompassing experience, for a contemporary artist whose previous
works have unflinchingly confronted subjects as described by the exhibition
catalogue as testing the thresholds of received ideas of decency, taste and
social norm, to revert to a classical, almost idealised depiction of motherhood
seems more than a little regressive and unconvincing.
Despite this, this exhibition is an absolute must see and I
whole-heartedly recommend a visit. It is
rare that a one-person show at Modern Art Oxford can hold its own in the lofty
galleries in the former brewery. Jenny Saville’s work seems almost site
specific and fit into the galleries like a glove, albeit a bloodied surgical
one. 
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