Jenny Saville, Propped

Let’s share the body … the female body. Eat from it all of you.

This is how Rafał Betlejewski writes about Saville , reflecting on her art in the context of Easter.

Poland – this artistic fallow land, this beastly indifferent mansion – needs art more than any other country in the world. Otherwise, we will die of our phobias, we will die in the darkness of our own paranoia, we will be devoured by Christ, whom we have turned into an emotional hyena, even though we were to devour His Body.

On Easter, I would like to share the Body … the female body. As Jenny Saville depicts them in her extraordinary, striking paintings. Let it be an antidote to obsessive images of bodies fit and toned by notorious gymnastics on ubiquitous carpets and floor coverings, created with a surrendered expression exposed to the mirror. Let it also be a rest from the tormented male body hanging from a block of wood, which is to somehow mitigate and intimidate us – looking at Saville, let’s try to realize that a truly tormented body is a female body, and that morality and all metaphysics come from the body as one, from his mere presence, from his unbearable weight, and not from the conversations bearded men had in the desert with a burning bush. This body – our everyday body – with its insistence is the source of our embarrassment and ecstasy (although it may be one and the same) and therefore demands camouflage. One more remark: Jesus’ body is the female body par excellence. It is worth realizing it when going to bless the eggs.

Now to Saville. I saw her (her work) live for the first time at the famous Sensations exhibition in London in 1996, and then again in New York. It was her most famous painting, Propped, depicting a huge female body propped up on a stool, barely under the top of the painting, claws digging into her thighs, a challenging expression and letters from a feminist manifesto. Can you imagine having something like that on your wall? I omit that you would have to have a large wall … and 50 million zlotys, because that is how much this painting sold. And Jenny painted it when she was 20. I mean… what? I was 22 when I looked at this body in London and I remember that I could barely tell my name, let alone paint something so conscious.

Jenny – my peer – was then at the Glasgow School of Art, which is characterized by an emphasis on figurative painting, and as the artist herself recalls, the nature drawing and model workshop was open every day from morning to evening, and at the end of the year each student had to present some number of figurative paintings, although, of course, it was possible to specialize in any kind of painting. And this training turned out to be basic for Saville. It was the workshop technique – as she says – that gave her the courage to express herself individually. And it shows. I do not want to whine and pretend to be a specialist, but my visits to the reviews of works by students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw give me an unpleasant feeling that the workshop basics are the Achilles’ heel of young painters, that many of them want to “express themselves artistically” before learning to paint properly and work studio is like a cure. Anyway, if you look at Saville’s artistic development, you can see that Propped is a student job!

Jenny Saville is a feminist artist – that’s what she says about herself.

And translating it into a less political language, Jenny is a woman, and she paints like a woman, with the opinion of men deep in her ass. As she says herself, what struck her immediately when she started dealing with art was the total lack of women among artists and the omnipotent male point of view also on the female body. Under the influence of this observation, she even wanted to quit painting, but the impulse was stronger than her – let’s remember: you don’t choose to be an artist, it is a genetic condition that you can’t cope with. That is why today we can look at these stunning works and think about what a gift an artist is. How important it is for every society to create conditions for creativity, giving young people and older creators space to live and work. Poland – this artistic fallow land, this beastly indifferent mansion – needs art more than any other country in the world. Otherwise, we will die of our phobias, we will die in the darkness of our own paranoia, we will be devoured by Christ, whom we have turned into an emotional hyena, even though we were to devour His Body. How did this happen? Polish people!

Inspiration: Tim Okamura

In his portraits of women, Brooklyn painter Tim Okamura explores the phenomenon of identity. His paintings show black women surrounded by elements suggesting nature: butterflies and rodents are visible, and on others graffiti resembling urban landscapes appear. A native of Canada, Okamura “explores identity, the urban environment and contemporary iconography through a unique painting method – combining an academic approach to characters with collage, spray paint and mixed media.” The artist said that he paid attention to people who are often “underrepresented” in art. This allows him to get to know others from himself and to question his ideas about his own identity.