Customer Reviews

Jenny Saville

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jenny Saville is a big painter! Probably one of the few painters in history whose career was launched at her finals show form art school, Saville has established herself as one of the more exciting figurative artists of our time. Right up there with Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud in her ability to splash daring observations and passions on huge canvases, she has already establish a 'look' that is unmistakable.

Not that Saville was the first painter to dwell on the massively/morbidly obese female (Freud's 'carcasses' were startlingly new, Haneline Rogeberg has painted the full figured female for years, etc), but her superimposition of surgical alteration and disease states together with the painterly style of describing flesh are startling and awe inspiring. Placing multiple figures together ('Fulcrum') or conjoined or simply overloading the capacity of a sitter's stool emphasizes the magnitude of her thoughts on her very large canvases.

Many people are grumbling about the design of the book and the paucity of completed works and to an extent this is reason for concern. The four essays may be old to those who have followed her career, but to those to whom Jenny Saville is a discovery these four writings do add depth to understanding her skyrocketing rise to fame. It is terrific to see photographs of the materials in her studio that have inspired her paintings: drawings, surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states, transgender patients and notes all add to the atmosphere of the studio where she works.

Perhaps the next monograph, and there surely will be one as Saville continues to grow and mature, will give us more new work. Until then at least we have a large book that congregates the bulk of her work and for that we should be grateful! Recommended. Grady Harp, December 05

As an Artist (Painter) who buys many art books and counts Jenny Saville as one of his favorite younger painters, I have been eagerly awaiting this books release. I was also fortunate enough to get the Catalogue for Saville's Territories exhibition, and not I don't want to sell it. Considering the quality of the Territories and Migrants publications, my expectations for this book were admittedly high. I also saw both shows in person. As for this book, Disappointing is an understatement. Let's start with the obvious, it is incomplete and does not contain any of her earlier work and the text is nothing new, just a collection of older stuff. Then the reproduction quality is poor, the images are too small, the colors aren't accurate, they're overly contrasting. This leads me to believe that someone that never saw the actual works ran the images through some Photoshop printing filter and didn't actually compare the printed images to the paintings. In addition, the layout of the artwork in the book is just plain bad. Instead of centering the images on the page, they hug the center, which makes them awkward to look at. For a book publisher, this is unforgivable.

The positive aspects of the book are: well, there's finally a book on Saville and the photos of her studies, references and studio a well done, in fact there could be more. They do provide detail shots of her painting, which is mandatory with her work considering the scale. However, the few positives can't make up for a very poor book overall on an important contemporary artist.

One reviewer said, "Move over Lucian Freud", I think not. A comparison cannot be made until Saville is in her 80's, then we'll (well someone will) talk. While her earlier work is very impressive, I'm becoming concerned about where she is going paint wise. The earlier work has "character", the newer work and pieces from the Migrants exhibition seem slick, rushed and overly pretty. The new work also lacks the conceptual strength of the early work (her weak point anyway). It seems to me she's becoming a cliché of herself. The best comparison I can think of is the animation style of the early Simpsons or South Park compared to later years. The rough edges and distinctiveness have disappeared, replaces by standardization and predictability, never a good thing for an artist. I hope that this phase of Saville's career will pass quickly.

Final Score 4 out of 10

A little bit of a disappointment to be honest. Every painting in this book has been published already except for 'torso 1'. I think I was looking for the "complete works" not just some selected ones that the publisher thought was representing. On top of that, the writings by the late David Sylvester and Linda Nochlin where also previously published. On a good note, the people out there who don't already have the Territories, Migrants or Macro catalogues need not spend thousands of dollars trying to acquire them now. I did like the studio photos and the close-ups. It does give you a sense of how she works and what makes up her paintings. Nothing substitutes seeing Jenny Saville's work in person but being able to see her brush strokes does help a lot. I guess it's worth the thirty dollars or so for the book. Just don't look for a Catalogue Raisonne.

I'm a simple painter with a large collection of art monographs. I was excited to learn of this release that I pre-ordered from Amazon back in September. This would be the first comprehensive tome on the young Miss Saville. I have bit and pieces here and there, but as you know, it's quite nice to have it collected in one serious, single book. It would have been great had that happened. Instead, I found a confusing collage of frank source material and paintings that does neither justice. Her monumental human landscapes and faces lose scale and the murky and lurid studio images almost take center stage. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think a more focused book on her paintings would feel more satisfying, although less trendy.

The book opens with two short essays and a reprint from The Independent, January 30 1994, which is a statement by the artist about her work and her approach; in addition there is an interview with Jenny Saville, May 2005, in which she further describes her approach to painting. The book includes a Biography and a Bibliography. Of the text by far the more interesting are the two in the artist's own words, far more down to earth and revealing, the two short essays border on the pretentious.

There is no question that the book is beautifully illustrated with around 85 full-colour images. However it is worth noting how that breaks down. There are 32 paintings illustrated, and while a few approach full-page size many are smaller, unnecessarily so as there is plenty of room on the page; these picture need to be as large as possible considering the actual size of the paintings. About 20 of the illustrations are of a detail of the paintings, these images are full page or even double-page bleed illustrations; they are very informative although one or two seem so enlarged as to become abstract images in their own right. The remaining 33 or so images, mostly double-page bleed illustrations, are photographs of extracts from the artists notes and sketch books, her sources such as books or photographs, and views of her studio; however again one or two go beyond being informative and are simply arty pictures for their own sake.

This is a well produced book, the illustrations show the artist's work well, and convey an idea of the texture of the paint. However overall I feel it is lacking, the attempt at a showy display and the cleaver photography detract from the paintings, and apart from the artist's own words the text is insubstantial. FIVE STARS for the artist, but the book could be a lot better.

Jenny Saville's gripping art is presented beautifully in this lavish full-color hardcover. Her work, evocative of Lucien Freud's but somehow more slick -- her brush technique is very clean -- is at once lovely and disturbing. This is a book any admirer of fine contemporary (or, for that matter, any era) representational art should own. Saville is still remarkably young; one can only imagine how far her talent will guide her.

"The greatest living realist painter" is how Robert Hughes described Lucian Freud. Move over Lucian. I for one am stunned at the virtuosity of Saville. I agree with the first reviewer that I would have loved to have a tomb about 300+ pages of just artwork. I guess we will just have to wait. But what we do have here is equally worth the price. I found the studio photos and reference photos very enlightening. You can see where her ideas have come from and literally see the photos she is working from. From an artists point of view, this is wonderful. The reproductions that are in the book are very good. I really, really wish we could have seen more of her drawings as I think these reveal the real strength of her work. I find the shock value of some of the subjects a little old, but have no problem because the pure application of paint and line is so very beautiful. Would we even be writing about Jenny Saville if whe was painting flowers or landscapes? Irregardless, she is who she is, and I love it. A must see is the painting of the cow carcass. Stroke for stroke, this is one of the best paintings every done.

Jenny Saville's paintings are not only gorgeous painterly works but also speak volumns about the view of all bodies and the meaning of difference. She is the Bacon and Freud next generation from a feminist perspective.

All other considerations aside, Jenny Saville can paint, and this book proves it, close up and pouring across the pages. Truly a "painter's painter," Saville uses heightened color discovered, apparently, through manipulating photographs in Photoshop, then painting the results. However she arrives at it, her paint is gorgeous, the colors luscious and compelling. Without a doubt Saville blows away the competition in contemporary figurative realism. For my money, Lucien Freud has nothing on this young female painter. On the other hand, anyone thinking of buying the book should realize that many of the figures are grotesque, raw, actually painful to look at. Art historian Linda Nochlin calls them "hugely disturbing," and I have to agree. It is, in fact, the virtuosity of the paint that delivers such a visceral gut punch when applied to the subject matter, which ranges from obesity plus plastic surgery to men with large [..] plus male genitalia, all displayed in gargantuan proportions right in your face.
The articles accompanying this monograph are excellent as well -- and not nearly disturbing as the images.

I have mixed feeling about this book. Jenny Saville is an amazing painter, but the subject matter is so grotesque I can never get through the book in one sitting without closing it in disgust. Dead meat, obese naked women, surgery & bloody flesh, hermaphrodites....I can't tell if she's disturbed or chooses these subjects for shock value to get attention in the art world. Whatever the case may be, her talent cannot be denied. The reason it is so disturbing is also the reason it is so great - because her rendering is so true to flesh. From the perspective of an art lover and a would-be painter, I am amazed by her talent and style. She definitely stands out, and this book deserves it's place in my art library.