Far from being an original voice, Jenny Saville adds her shrill feminine wiles to the multitude, the genre.
Ironic that in painting flesh, Saville may seek to bring us closer to mortaliy and through inert static painted death, back to vibrant life.
If she is unaware of her failure to sensitize the cold, primitive reptilian brain of the viewer, then she is naive. If the continues her project, in the face of the market, and society, and history, mere hubris, or abject cynicism.
The insitutional scale of her works that I saw at the Gagosian make them billboards - essentialy a triumph of the will to power.
No more affecting than the oversized (illegal) banners of semi- nude unblemished models advertising underwear - in fact they become invisible, leaving you with the need to interpret their message.
They are not intended to be part of the tradition of realist painting. They are not an examination of the material world or of painting practice primarily but an examination of images of women and the obvious references to people like Rosa Bonheur just mean that she is speaking the same language to say different things. I don't want to go into the fact that she sells the photographs but I think it is important to judge the work on it's own term.
Hmmm, I actually think her photos function better than the paintings do right now, on their own terms. The problem with the paintings is that they do indeed depend upon a realist painting language, and while I agree with you, Kelli, that Saville's intention is to go past traditional Realism, she hasn't yet figured out a way to tweak the painting language so that we understand where she's going. She's trying to push the imagery (and the scale) instead, but it's not interesting or clear enough.
just in reference to "how realist painting is capable of functioning": a lot of contemporary realism is dusty academic naval gazing with some contemporary content thrown in and these are primarily about the content although paint=flesh is sort of an obvious point and I wonder what else could be done with it.
Saville has chops alright, shes infulenced by DeKooning and Francis Bacon.
I think the Bacon connection helps expplain her fasination with flesh and decay, the feminist aspect of her work is from the early days, art school and a few years after. This painting is from the 1996,97, which is a decade ago.
Her wok is very different now and for my money shes making a pretty strong statement about things that concern her and the body.
I saw the show at Gagosian and it was great.
The work was interesting to me as it did a whole different thing when viewed say at 5 feet than from across the room. That alone was worth the trip. Her ability to make a good a painting is enough for me.
Its refreshing to see something well done. The scale does not bother me. There is a history of large figure painting and I don't see anything wrong with it if you pull it off great.
She lives in Palermo in Sicily, which is also interesting. Off the art map a large part of the time.
Even though the DeKooning "all over" reference can apply, has anyone noticed that the arrangement of the nudes in this picture has a "mass grave" quality? Is this an oblique attempt to express socio-political concerns over war that you find in work today without completely voiding her previous body of work's rationale?
Maybe not that different from Luc Delahaye, dead bodies in wartime, the corpselike gaze of people on the subway although the context and the specific content is maybe more interesting in his work. Not apples vs. oranges because they both use photos. http://www.schaden.com/covers/025/02522.jpg
SS. you described the day you found the carcass as one of the most romantic days of your life.
JS. Yes, because I'd wanted to do a large carcass for so many years after seeing Rembrandt's Slaughtered Ox and the Soutine carcasses. I saw two of them at the Royal Academy in London a couple of years ago. There was light emanating from the paint-the color jumped right out at you. There are these romantic stories of him puring fresh blood over the meat.
Painting is what it is. When it's really good, it makes your eyes widen, your breath deeper. You know you're standing in front of something incredibly impotant about your existence but you don't know why.
she has always used photos. I find the dismisive attitiude to the realist painting(“dusty academic”) one sees in such great institiutions such as the Art Students League and tha National Academy to be taring a large and interesting part of painting with one brush, if you pardon the bad pun.
The League is an inexpensive way to get a pretty good art education, there are some very good painters teaching such as Larry Poons and Frank Mason.
What is the problem or fear of this? This is just post-modern brain washed ideology and its funny that you can like an bad painting by Justin Craun or Peyton and then be dismissive of painters who at least have some idea how to draw.
As said above by Closeup her work is aiming at the head not the gut so I'm dealing with it on those terms. It suffers from comparison with someone like Delahaye who deals with similar subjects.
I agree, but if you start to read what Saville says about painting and her own work you start to see she is aproaching this on a traditional level as well.
Granted this might not come across as well as she thinks it does, but it is interesting what she says about Rembrandt and Soutine.
I didnt mean the head is the only level she's working on. Her great strength is that she works strong on many levels--history, art history, painting technique, theoretical, visceral, etc.
is pretty good if you like semi-abstract biomorphic forms. I think his palette is a bit limited and it gets repetitive, but the underlying fantasy should not be dismissed.
WHo are we? Why are we here? Where are we going?
Are we just meat puppets, on the strings of fate/chaos theory? Or do we have free will and fly on gossamer wings?
They don't need us...they really don't...Feeling like Pluto today...
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Don't get me wrong as visual spectacle they kick Delahaye's ass but flesh as spectacle opens up all sorts of points ( I thought of Albert Speer too) and just leaves them hanging there. This is going to be a pretty staggering show when a museum mounts a retrospective but too many unanswered conceptual questions.
I really really dig her work. At first I was embarassed... but that's when I read books n stuff. You know, the protestant ones. Now that I've burned all of my books, I'm free to party.Kenny Loggins style. Everybody cut footloose.
That is a good point. If you see these in real life, the scale is the most impressive. They are so large that they are actually not that realistic. In fact, considering the large swooping gestural swooshes of the marks, they are quite abstract. The picture here is deceptive for that reason. f this talk were being conducted while standing in front of the painting, I am not sure how far this conversation over realism would go. It surely has a place in her work but she is not so clearly set in that camp as this discussion makes it sound.
Most of the comments here implying her as a "dusty academic" to me only demonstrate that such people who suggest so have not seen these paintings in real life. They are in fact more cold and calculated than emotional and romantic. These are not Lucian Freud paintings. I am not saying this to defend Saville's work or approach but only to correct some inaccuracies here.
Eddie I said she goes beyond the "dusty academic" school of contemporary realism. You know portraits of the nude model in the studio with some extra prop or costume to give it content. She is way past that.But then I have to ask questions about the content and compare it to other things including photos with similar content. BTW I like her much more than some of the people I gave faint praise to.
Jenny isnt bad - I was impressed with the gago show - but the brushwork (stickwork) is pretty academic (premeditated).
I worked at a silkscreen place printing large posters (All you can eat 3.99) and if these big swedish silk screen machines could squeegee ink over an eight by fifteen foot poster - and so could you, given a broom or two by four. I might do it - its a lot of fun to work large. Find a parking lot. Take a picture. DO it now.
But if I recall, the shapes were somewhat random, because when you do that it becomes about arcs of movement (restraint, if you will)
I saw Anselm Kiefer - same deal. Big stuff is fun. SO are stilts. Try them.
Back to Frankenthaler, Moris louis et al - well she made big watercolors essentially - theres a scosh of humor to that.
In the same way, if you made HR Giger or Frazetta large and in charge, it would be pretty spectacular. I'm reminded of the theatrical backdrops from This Marx bros movie - "NIght at the Opera" - they get all torn up errol flynn on the ropes style. AWESOME!
I dont know maybe Im thinking of FOntana.
One hundred slashed canvases were found in Bacon's studio. The larger ones were stacked up against the walls and windows, while some of the smaller ones were found piled on shelves or discarded on the floor. These works, although destroyed, often show what a Bacon canvas looks like before completion.
Painterdog don't you see Francis Bacon more? Same issues and frankly the same limitations. Really good but short of great precisely because of the limits that give it impact.
DOnald Kuspit thinks shes a new old master, a cure for the meaninglessness of cynical irony.
Kuspit also thinks theres something called fate, not sure what that means to anyone but he seems pretty romantic and not very objective, but I guess thats what keeps you churning out totalizing master narratives.
SPeaking of narratives - JS is on the cover of a manic street preachers album. I dont care but I also learned theres a lot of cash for the singer who went missing - millions are held in trust.
If capital is stored in paintings - If capital is stored in paintings isnt it inert? In the same way that an all powerfull god, in its inaction, loses its omnipotence?
If capital is made inert, as in potential energy, is it not like a boulder poised at the top of a ravine? If a boulder at the top of a ravine is made unliftable, even to the god that created it, is that not a stone but rather, a hole?
What use the unmoveable boulder at the top of the ravine?
Kuspit, you rascal you, getting me all worked up. Why do we need new old masters when I can crush your puny skull against the immovable rock of truth?
Last time I'll say it: I love Delahaye and conceptually but not visually he eats these up. The pictures of blank-eyed corpse -like people staring into space when they don't know a camera is in front of them whisper what these shout. But I guess the old masters at least the Southern European ones usually shouted too.
what about that show where the compared your girl Eilz. Peyton to Andy this summer in the Hamptonz. once it gets into there hands it rides a horse of itz own.
Epilept when I talk about academic painting with a few props thrown in to make it current I'm talking about people like Stephen Assael. I didn't want to be mean enough to say names. She's way better than that genre. questions. -what is it like to work within such tight limits like Bacon or Saville. Wake up every morning happy? -what will these be in 100 years or 300? -new old master painting: sincere continuation of humanist tradition or deeply cynical rejection of the possibilty of new feelling? Delahaye shows me new things.
Saville is 36 Freud is 84. When she painted the painting on this blog she was 26, not bad for a person 4 years out of art school. As for the coolness I think that is part of the idea she is trying to get across, there is a juxtaposition of flesh and vourism.
Lets give her some time. Look at Freud's work when he was 26, its good but not what you see now.
Freud is in a class by himself, I agree Bacon can disappoint, he was a drunkard, and I think it became a problem with his work growing after a certin point in his life.
Luc Delahaye shows that painting will almost always fail -- when asked to deliver the kind, or even flavor, of impact that photography is able to deliver.
An exception of course is an image like the aa bronson image, which points to the moment of capture -- photography's hallmark. Painting's hallmark, by comparison, references the 'moments' of capture (regardless of whether a photographic print was used in the making). Painting happens, and delivers, according to it's own scale of time, whereas photography plays directly upon the viewer's sense of time -- hence the smack, when one is confronted by a moving photograph.
She has always been a favorite contemporary artist of mine. Some of her work is a little much but for the most part she is one of the better big name artist. I think she actually deserves the hype she gets.
because it reminds me of that scene in Brazill where the camera pans above the billboards to reveal the toxic wasteland - the desert of the real, if you will.
Originally a photojournalist but switched to fine art. The war scenes are photojournalism. I'm not sure why he and Saville remind me of each other. I forget she is so young. It really is an impressive body of work.
What is wrong with photojournalism? not enough of the hand?
I think its more about imagination - that somehow photojournalists arent credited with being imaginative or having a rich inner life. Take Steve Mumford for example - hes a watercolor journalist - I dont see him having visions or making clever art-historical art - just a regular dude going to Iraq - a low key Hemingway.
I dont know where I picked up the prejudice against photojournalists - but I do know its not my thing - still, photojournalist images are compelling in a way that Jeff Wall isnt (Wegee) Jeff Wall isnt my thing either - although I like large format light boxes as a medium.
I like the warhol electric chairs, and the piss paintings are just taking traditional patina methods (naughty!) and applying them to canvas. I mean people cure hides with urine and no one says its sexualized, just you might get a smelly leather jacket.
Intent, I guess.
So John Coplans would be an interesting comparison - though I dont care for his stuff either.
I do like weston, probably bcause of his tonality and stuff. Plus he was first.
Im more interested in who makes the props for movies like the mummy and underworld - im noticing a srtiking simularity.
Green and black splinters shards of color spinning Laugher, and flesh intermingling down the slippery slope of incline Pastures weep down their course at the bottom giggly giggles stand up grass and debris a quick flick as little knees bend up to the top of the slope again.
Simon spoke "I'm personally heartfelt by this art."
photojournalism is not pretending to be art. If you don't like it so be it. Some photojournalists happened to be good at making art out of moments, Wegee comes to mind. Mumford does not do it for me at all. There is an artist from Scotland who went to Bosnia in the 90's, Peter Howson, he did some really interesting work from the experience, very much like German expressionist work.
For photojournalists I like Robert Capa, Dennis Stock(he took that great photo of James Dean),James Nachtwey,Lauren Greenfield, go to Magnum or VII photo agency web sites to check out some of the best photojournalist.
howson has asperger's syndrome, as does his daughter, it runs in families.
His work from the Bosnian conflict is pretty interesting, when you compair it to Mumford's you can see how much Mumford missed a good oportunity to make some very powerful work.
It bothers me to hear people bashing Schutz and I've heard it a lot in conversation. They are not entirely my thing but she is original in her own way ( not as traditional or derivative as people think) and not just hiring assistants to make 3 shows a year in 3 different countries( I think she works really hard). I've heard her bashed so often it sickens me.
I am not bashing Schutz, and as far as I'm concerned there is nothing new under the sun. I am not into her work(Schutz) that much, I don't care that she has a lot of sucsess. In fact I think its great, I hope she can deal with it. Saville has built it up over 10 years, and she only shows very little, so I think her not being in New York has helped her develop.
Saville's work is very different for me, I am into her work because I think is speaks on a lot of different levels.
Schutz's work just does not do it for me.
That Saville is from London means nothing to me. I'm not from NY so I could not care less what openings Schutz goes to.
LFL was a little gallery when Schutz started out. Cecily Brown used to be the person everyone hated then Matthew Barney. But the people who hire assistants to make everything for them never seem to take abuse. Because they are less threatening?
personally i don't have much of a problem with assistants. i don't have alot of romance for craft, in say painting for me it is almost a part of the process and conceptually a big part of it for alot of Artist's.... Then there are director Artists social sculpture (Barney) vs say the "faux do it your self" video Artists who don't have any relationship with the tech. whom i deeply resent. maybe it comes from haveing done so much ghost editing. that sounds like a contradiction i guess.
For Koons or Barney it doesn't contadict the work's intent. But a lot of people make traditional easel paintings they don't actually paint and don't admit to using assistants. I've been shocked by some of the names.
btw PDog...thanks for alerting me to Howson. I like his expressionist energy and it's given me an idea about how to solve part of a painting I'm battling with....{I have no assistants to help...:]}
no problem, there are a whole bunch of Scottish painters from that period, the 80's who where doing some interesting work, Stephan Campbell, Ken Currie, Howson, Saville went to the same school as they did, only later. Glasgow school of art. They all had the same teacher. A guy called Sandy Moffat.
How do I know all this you might ask, I used to live there.
That's the thing I also know struggling painters who paint other people's paintings and don't want to get folks in trouble. I think the main artists should credit assistants on their resume. So why all the hate for Schutz?
Not you Pdog it's just a conversation I've listened to a dozen times at gatherings of artists. People seem to really resent her success but she has worked for it. Not really my thing also but I respect it.
Could it be that because Saville doesn’t live in NYC folks can fantasize about her as the “other?”
I think most people have been to England, guy.
I havent, but uh, I did acid once and people's faces kind of glowed like a schutz. The faces divided into plains which, dreamlike, I interpreted to be muscle underneath the flesh.
Then I went to the toilet and the flushing water was a fractal - which it is - but it was slower somehow, but also, I couldnt grasp its form.
she had a show up here at the Rose art musem, it generated some WTF remarks.
A lot of people liked it as well.
I think a lot of this her gallery, which I wont go into much but I think that the owner Zack is well, doing some interesting marketing of her.
I don't think hes doing the right thing, but then again if it was me I would not being saying no. Sucsess is so much better than... and those people who you meet who are talking trash about her need to get a life or move to another city.
Her statement from that show was really lame though. I'll say this for Saville most of what I have read that she has wrote on her work is very incitful and not full of MFA art speak, which Dana still has.
This local art writer(Charles Giuliano) wrote a very good article on her, while its critical but very well done.
I don't think Saville is making mega bucks, as she does not seem to show a lot.
She teaches at the Slade school of art I think.
The other stuff is the dealers, its Schutz's dealer who's doing all this crap.
Hey I agree, I see burnout in her future, but I don't think if yuur really into being a painter that matters. Just make enough, invest well and keep working. All I know is I wish I had a 1/4 the luck those women have and at any age.
Saville and Schutz are both way good. They don't have much in common other than being both women and to compare them using an united out-modem is a little off line. Whether one has a dozen assistants and the other ten feet in a bucket of ice to keep focused doesn't matter. The work speaks. That matters above the mind's plotsam jepson.
Just an observation I think a lot of art dealers find the hype in the art market distasteful but feel they have to participate. Zach Fuer started out with a small space in Boston and for years LFL was almost an alternative space that showed young artists and not easily saleable installation art. His wife is a gifted artist. I think art dealers and artists enter the system out of a genuine love for art and get sucked up in the market.
Zach Feuer is still a real cool guy! (not at kelli):Where do you get off implying hes doing any kind of "crap"? Dont gossip based on second hand observations pleeeaaaaassssseeeeeeeee wtf@#*%
I don't know him but I've seen Zach at Hunter College open studios taking the time to talk to students about their work and be supportive. The fact that people are successful ( Feuer or Schutz) does not mean they have lost touch or are not sincere about art.
Pdog I don't think anybody meant you. You are lucky not to live in NY and listen to the conversation where artists ( many with trust funds) complain about another artist's success and people bash Schutz a lot. Maybe the pressure isn't healthy though.
Zach's gallery was in Provincetown, not Boston. Yes he is a nice guy; ultimately a businessman, but nothing wrong with that. He has excellent instincts... a little cutthroat, but he genuinely loves art. Re: Schutz, Ageism can cut both ways. Plenty of creaky artists don't merit a retrospective at 70, some few deserve one at 30. Why not? She's pretty brilliant, IMO.
Saville is incredibly accomplished, but also quite literal/knowing, which is fine if there's humor mixed in, but the meat is a bit dry for my taste.
lives and works in London, England
ReplyDeleteSaville is totally talented, and I give her great props for making ambitious realist paintings in the here and now. The woman can really push the paint around, and draws powerfully, again, in an unapologetically High Realist mode, which is refreshing in it's ambition and in-your-face quality, yet is also troubling in another sense. I feel like Saville's style is grafted onto her subject matter, which seems to be a too-vague set of notions about the seductions and repulsions of flesh, particularly the female body. Kiki Smith's paper-maché figures from the '80s provided much more of a kick to the gut, and really made you think about the inner workings of the body. For that matter, so did Soutine and Velasquez, with the real feeling of veins and blood under the skin. Saville's stuff is more Rubens-like to me: too much about surface. Also, in the image posted, the lined-up figures covering the picture plane feel like a clumsy nod to DeKooning, in their attempt to create an idea of fleshy paint "all over" the canvas. This muddles the content, IMO, and backs away from how realist painting is capable of functioning.
ReplyDeletevery astute!
ReplyDeleteSerious chops. But these are not realist painting nor do I think they are intended to be.
ReplyDeleteWell what are they, then? The intention is unclear. And yes, she does have serious chops: I guess that's why I'm being a bit hard on her. I want more.
ReplyDeleteFar from being an original voice, Jenny Saville adds her shrill feminine wiles to the multitude, the genre.
ReplyDeleteIronic that in painting flesh, Saville may seek to bring us closer to mortaliy and through inert static painted death, back to vibrant life.
If she is unaware of her failure to sensitize the cold, primitive reptilian brain of the viewer, then she is naive. If the continues her project, in the face of the market, and society, and history, mere hubris, or abject cynicism.
The insitutional scale of her works that I saw at the Gagosian make them billboards - essentialy a triumph of the will to power.
No more affecting than the oversized (illegal) banners of semi- nude unblemished models advertising underwear - in fact they become invisible, leaving you with the need to interpret their message.
Agitprop.
Wall of flesh
One can only shudder at the thought of some PC Albert Speer screening Leni Riefensthal in plush calf skin bucket seats, flanked by a pair of these.
They are not intended to be part of the tradition of realist painting. They are not an examination of the material world or of painting practice primarily but an examination of images of women and the obvious references to people like Rosa Bonheur just mean that she is speaking the same language to say different things. I don't want to go into the fact that she sells the photographs but I think it is important to judge the work on it's own term.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I actually think her photos function better than the paintings do right now, on their own terms. The problem with the paintings is that they do indeed depend upon a realist painting language, and while I agree with you, Kelli, that Saville's intention is to go past traditional Realism, she hasn't yet figured out a way to tweak the painting language so that we understand where she's going. She's trying to push the imagery (and the scale) instead, but it's not interesting or clear enough.
ReplyDeletejust in reference to "how realist painting is capable of functioning": a lot of contemporary realism is dusty academic naval gazing with some contemporary content thrown in and these are primarily about the content although paint=flesh is sort of an obvious point and I wonder what else could be done with it.
ReplyDeleteSaville has chops alright, shes infulenced by DeKooning and Francis Bacon.
ReplyDeleteI think the Bacon connection helps expplain her fasination with flesh and decay, the feminist aspect of her work is from the early days, art school and a few years after. This painting is from the 1996,97, which is a decade ago.
Her wok is very different now and for my money shes making a pretty strong statement about things that concern her and the body.
I saw the show at Gagosian and it was great.
The work was interesting to me as it did a whole different thing when viewed say at 5 feet than from across the room. That alone was worth the trip. Her ability to make a good a painting is enough for me.
Its refreshing to see something well done.
The scale does not bother me. There is a history of large figure painting and I don't see anything wrong with it if you pull it off great.
She lives in Palermo in Sicily, which is also interesting. Off the art map a large part of the time.
Even though the DeKooning "all over" reference can apply, has anyone noticed that the arrangement of the nudes in this picture has a "mass grave" quality? Is this an oblique attempt to express socio-political concerns over war that you find in work today without completely voiding her previous body of work's rationale?
ReplyDeleteMaybe not that different from Luc Delahaye, dead bodies in wartime, the corpselike gaze of people on the subway although the context and the specific content is maybe more interesting in his work. Not apples vs. oranges because they both use photos.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.schaden.com/covers/025/02522.jpg
Would anyone paint like this unless they were adressing history? These are more a kick to the head than the gut.
ReplyDeleteInterview with Jenny Saville:
ReplyDeleteSimon Schama.
SS. you described the day you found the carcass as one of the most romantic days of your life.
JS. Yes, because I'd wanted to do a large carcass for so many years after seeing Rembrandt's Slaughtered Ox and the Soutine carcasses. I saw two of them at the Royal Academy in London a couple of years ago. There was light emanating from the paint-the color jumped right out at you. There are these romantic stories of him puring fresh blood over the meat.
Painting is what it is. When it's really good, it makes your eyes widen, your breath deeper. You know you're standing in front of something incredibly impotant about your existence but you don't know why.
J. Saville
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteshe has always used photos.
ReplyDeleteI find the dismisive attitiude to the realist painting(“dusty academic”) one sees in such great institiutions such as the Art Students League and tha National Academy to be taring a large and interesting part of painting with one brush, if you pardon the bad pun.
The League is an inexpensive way to get a pretty good art education, there are some very good painters teaching such as Larry Poons and Frank Mason.
What is the problem or fear of this?
This is just post-modern brain washed ideology and its funny that you can like an bad painting by Justin Craun or Peyton and then be dismissive of painters who at least have some idea how to draw.
As said above by Closeup her work is aiming at the head not the gut so I'm dealing with it on those terms. It suffers from comparison with someone like Delahaye who deals with similar subjects.
ReplyDeleteI agree, but if you start to read what Saville says about painting and her own work you start to see she is aproaching this on a traditional level as well.
ReplyDeleteGranted this might not come across as well as she thinks it does, but it is interesting what she says about Rembrandt and Soutine.
I didnt mean the head is the only level she's working on. Her great strength is that she works strong on many levels--history, art history, painting technique, theoretical, visceral, etc.
ReplyDeletegiger
ReplyDeleteis pretty good if you like semi-abstract biomorphic forms. I think his palette is a bit limited and it gets repetitive, but the underlying fantasy should not be dismissed.
WHo are we? Why are we here? Where are we going?
Are we just meat puppets, on the strings of fate/chaos theory? Or do we have free will and fly on gossamer wings?
Such seductive painting!!
ReplyDeleteIt's all there.... emotional depth et al
They don't need us...they really don't...Feeling like Pluto today...
ReplyDeleteIs Climate Change a real threat? . . . Or the best opportunity for your company? Join us to hear Dr Pieter Tans, one of the top climatologists in the world, explain the science behind global warming and why you need to be concerned. Then, listen as Sierra Dall, President of Challenge International, Inc. describes some of the innovative energy saving solutions implemented by companies worldwide and explores how your organization can benfit from this time of tremendous opportunity. Finally, meet Tesla Motor's CEO, Martin Eberhard, as he tells the story of how Tesla Motors developed a sporty looking new electric car that goes from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4 seconds, travels 250 miles on one charge , and could transform Silicon Valley into what Detroit was 50 years ago.
c uup...... the emotional rollercoaster........... it's a bumpy ride.....
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong as visual spectacle they kick Delahaye's ass but flesh as spectacle opens up all sorts of points ( I thought of Albert Speer too) and just leaves them hanging there. This is going to be a pretty staggering show when a museum mounts a retrospective but too many unanswered conceptual questions.
ReplyDeletespectacle... is that a french word?
ReplyDeleteI really really dig her work.
At first I was embarassed...
but that's when I read books n stuff.
You know, the protestant ones.
Now that I've burned all of my books,
I'm free to party.Kenny Loggins style.
Everybody cut footloose.
That is a good point. If you see these in real life, the scale is the most impressive. They are so large that they are actually not that realistic. In fact, considering the large swooping gestural swooshes of the marks, they are quite abstract. The picture here is deceptive for that reason. f this talk were being conducted while standing in front of the painting, I am not sure how far this conversation over realism would go. It surely has a place in her work but she is not so clearly set in that camp as this discussion makes it sound.
ReplyDeleteMost of the comments here implying her as a "dusty academic" to me only demonstrate that such people who suggest so have not seen these paintings in real life. They are in fact more cold and calculated than emotional and romantic. These are not Lucian Freud paintings. I am not saying this to defend Saville's work or approach but only to correct some inaccuracies here.
ReplyDeleteEddie I said she goes beyond the "dusty academic" school of contemporary realism. You know portraits of the nude model in the studio with some extra prop or costume to give it content. She is way past that.But then I have to ask questions about the content and compare it to other things including photos with similar content. BTW I like her much more than some of the people I gave faint praise to.
ReplyDeleteDude, Kenny Loggins - here watch em allllllllll
ReplyDeletefucking great.
Jenny isnt bad - I was impressed with the gago show - but the brushwork (stickwork) is pretty academic (premeditated).
I worked at a silkscreen place printing large posters (All you can eat 3.99) and if these big swedish silk screen machines could squeegee ink over an eight by fifteen foot poster - and so could you, given a broom or two by four. I might do it - its a lot of fun to work large. Find a parking lot. Take a picture. DO it now.
But if I recall, the shapes were somewhat random, because when you do that it becomes about arcs of movement (restraint, if you will)
I saw Anselm Kiefer - same deal. Big stuff is fun. SO are stilts. Try them.
Back to Frankenthaler, Moris louis et al - well she made big watercolors essentially - theres a scosh of humor to that.
In the same way, if you made HR Giger or Frazetta large and in charge, it would be pretty spectacular. I'm reminded of the theatrical backdrops from This Marx bros movie - "NIght at the Opera" - they get all torn up errol flynn on the ropes style. AWESOME!
I dont know maybe Im thinking of FOntana.
One hundred slashed canvases were found in Bacon's studio. The larger ones were stacked up against the walls and windows, while some of the smaller ones were found piled on shelves or discarded on the floor. These works, although destroyed, often show what a Bacon canvas looks like before completion.
Kelli do you like Lucian Freud?
ReplyDeleteHave you seen Sophie Jodoin's work? www.sophiejodoin.com
Alyssa Monks? Who is a bit self obsessed with herself. But pretty good at realist painting.
www.alyssamonks.com
jump on in the waters fine.
ReplyDeletePainterdog don't you see Francis Bacon more? Same issues and frankly the same limitations. Really good but short of great precisely because of the limits that give it impact.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah big time, and she admits it.
ReplyDeleteBacon was (is) more interesting in how he resovled his work.
hand painted
ReplyDeleteI think I see some knifework and scumbling.
DOnald Kuspit thinks shes a new old master, a cure for the meaninglessness of cynical irony.
ReplyDeleteKuspit also thinks theres something called fate, not sure what that means to anyone but he seems pretty romantic and not very objective, but I guess thats what keeps you churning out totalizing master narratives.
SPeaking of narratives - JS is on the cover of a manic street preachers album. I dont care but I also learned theres a lot of cash for the singer who went missing - millions are held in trust.
If capital is stored in paintings - If capital is stored in paintings isnt it inert? In the same way that an all powerfull god, in its inaction, loses its omnipotence?
If capital is made inert, as in potential energy, is it not like a boulder poised at the top of a ravine? If a boulder at the top of a ravine is made unliftable, even to the god that created it, is that not a stone but rather, a hole?
What use the unmoveable boulder at the top of the ravine?
Kuspit, you rascal you, getting me all worked up. Why do we need new old masters when I can crush your puny skull against the immovable rock of truth?
I mean the bottomless pit of truth.
ReplyDeleteLast time I'll say it: I love Delahaye and conceptually but not visually he eats these up. The pictures of blank-eyed corpse -like people staring into space when they don't know a camera is in front of them whisper what these shout. But I guess the old masters at least the Southern European ones usually shouted too.
ReplyDeletelooks like a ocean of smacked out bitches to me... "all you need is love"
ReplyDeletewhat about that show where the compared your girl Eilz. Peyton to Andy this summer in the Hamptonz. once it gets into there hands it rides a horse of itz own.
ReplyDeleteOut of all the recent posts Saville is head and shoulders above. But we were talking about Rockman and now Warhol so we are stepping up.
ReplyDeletethats a e-pay from a hotel room in Lower Man.
ReplyDeleteyikes try this
ReplyDeleteWade: the Lucian Freud garden(s) are beyond words. What a great reference for painter who works from observation.
ReplyDeleteEpilept when I talk about academic painting with a few props thrown in to make it current I'm talking about people like Stephen Assael. I didn't want to be mean enough to say names. She's way better than that genre. questions.
ReplyDelete-what is it like to work within such tight limits like Bacon or Saville. Wake up every morning happy?
-what will these be in 100 years or 300?
-new old master painting: sincere continuation of humanist tradition or deeply cynical rejection of the possibilty of new feelling? Delahaye shows me new things.
Saville is 36 Freud is 84. When she painted the painting on this blog she was 26, not bad for a person 4 years out of art school. As for the coolness I think that is part of the idea she is trying to get across, there is a juxtaposition of flesh and vourism.
ReplyDeleteLets give her some time. Look at Freud's work when he was 26, its good but not what you see now.
Freud is in a class by himself, I agree Bacon can disappoint, he was a drunkard, and I think it became a problem with his work growing after a certin point in his life.
No more interesting than a description of the piece would be... A brief description.
ReplyDeleteLuc Delahaye shows that painting will almost always fail --
ReplyDeletewhen asked to deliver the kind, or even flavor, of impact
that photography is able to deliver.
An exception of course is an image like the aa bronson
image, which points to the moment of capture -- photography's
hallmark. Painting's hallmark, by comparison, references
the 'moments' of capture (regardless of whether a
photographic print was used in the making). Painting
happens, and delivers, according to it's own scale of time, whereas photography plays directly upon the viewer's sense of time -- hence the smack, when one is confronted
by a moving photograph.
the lg-scale lacquer on vinyl bronson, btw, was mechanically reproduced -- a photo by definition. A painting otherwise. In my mind at least. A hybrid.
ReplyDeleteShe has always been a favorite contemporary artist of mine. Some of her work is a little much but for the most part she is one of the better big name artist. I think she actually deserves the hype she gets.
ReplyDeleteFunny. Ha ha. Was just thinking about how the colorless odorless gass of history fills the void, its all going to blow - just light a cigarette.
ReplyDeleteI cant smell for shit - but Im smeling a phantom odor right now - too much coffee - its coming from inside me like a rotting corpse. Im rotting.
I'm rotting.
Kuspit says lack of feeling might be the ultimate pathology.
So but here its domestic, where Delahaye seems more politik - female vs male?
Guns vs dolls?
I dunno, does society push people towards certain subject matter? I dont think so, I think its a choice, and if not, god help you.
i like this
because it reminds me of that scene in Brazill where the camera pans above the billboards to reveal the toxic wasteland - the desert of the real, if you will.
Cincinatti never looked this good
Finally, I envy someone who doesnt get bored painting the human figure over and over again.
IS delahaye an artist or a photojournalist? My eyes are blurrry.
ReplyDeleteOriginally a photojournalist but switched to fine art. The war scenes are photojournalism. I'm not sure why he and Saville remind me of each other. I forget she is so young. It really is an impressive body of work.
ReplyDeletenot! ^_^
ReplyDeleteSo I was reading about Kant - he had this theory about detachment - I guess people apply that to Warhol, whatever.
ReplyDeleteStoicism.
Buddhist stoicism.
Then you can go and apply that to the use of photos as source material -
mediation.
And then I was watching about mind machine interfaces and how you can play pong now, simply by making "mind music".
Well whos afraid of becoming a cyborg?
I never get that. I always think of Warhol as totally sincere. American sublime.
ReplyDeleteWhat is wrong with photojournalism? not enough of the hand?
ReplyDeleteI think its more about imagination - that somehow photojournalists arent credited with being imaginative or having a rich inner life. Take Steve Mumford for example - hes a watercolor journalist - I dont see him having visions or making clever art-historical art - just a regular dude going to Iraq - a low key Hemingway.
I dont know where I picked up the prejudice against photojournalists - but I do know its not my thing - still, photojournalist images are compelling in a way that Jeff Wall isnt (Wegee) Jeff Wall isnt my thing either - although I like large format light boxes as a medium.
I like the warhol electric chairs, and the piss paintings are just taking traditional patina methods (naughty!) and applying them to canvas. I mean people cure hides with urine and no one says its sexualized, just you might get a smelly leather jacket.
Intent, I guess.
So John Coplans would be an interesting comparison - though I dont care for his stuff either.
I do like weston, probably bcause of his tonality and stuff. Plus he was first.
Im more interested in who makes the props for movies like the mummy and underworld - im noticing a srtiking simularity.
i think there were many different Warhols along the line - evident in the work. that natural nyc and the Artworld change people.
ReplyDeleteGreen and black splinters
ReplyDeleteshards of color spinning
Laugher, and flesh
intermingling
down the slippery slope
of incline
Pastures weep
down their course
at the bottom giggly giggles
stand up
grass and debris
a quick flick
as little knees bend up to the top of the slope again.
Simon spoke
"I'm personally heartfelt by this art."
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletephotojournalism is not pretending to be art.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't like it so be it.
Some photojournalists happened to be good at making art out of moments, Wegee comes to mind. Mumford does not do it for me at all. There is an artist from Scotland who went to Bosnia in the 90's, Peter Howson, he did some really interesting work from the experience, very much like German expressionist work.
For photojournalists I like Robert Capa, Dennis Stock(he took that great photo of James Dean),James Nachtwey,Lauren Greenfield, go to Magnum or VII photo agency web sites to check out some of the best photojournalist.
I think Peter Howson told Steven Berkoff that all artists have some form of autism.....
ReplyDeleteRisk and play in nocturne.
ReplyDeletehowson has asperger's syndrome, as does his daughter, it runs in families.
ReplyDeleteHis work from the Bosnian conflict is pretty interesting, when you compair it to Mumford's you can see how much Mumford missed a good oportunity to make some very powerful work.
CORPSE FUCKERS!
ReplyDeletewhere are you from?
Land of the Knee Walking Turkeys?
Roll roll roll your boat gently off the mountain
merrily merrily merrily
step into my fountain.
peter howson?
ReplyDeletewhats up with this blog?
where are all the pretentious art people?
have a good one.
It bothers me to hear people bashing Schutz and I've heard it a lot in conversation. They are not entirely my thing but she is original in her own way ( not as traditional or derivative as people think) and not just hiring assistants to make 3 shows a year in 3 different countries( I think she works really hard). I've heard her bashed so often it sickens me.
ReplyDeleteI am not bashing Schutz, and as far as I'm concerned there is nothing new under the sun. I am not into her work(Schutz) that much, I don't care that she has a lot of sucsess. In fact I think its great, I hope she can deal with it.
ReplyDeleteSaville has built it up over 10 years, and she only shows very little, so I think her not being in New York has helped her develop.
Saville's work is very different for me, I am into her work because I think is speaks on a lot of different levels.
Schutz's work just does not do it for me.
That Saville is from London means nothing to me. I'm not from NY so I could not care less what openings Schutz goes to.
What's wrong with Peter Howson?
i'd take schutz over saville anyday
ReplyDeletei find schutz somewhat miss managed, i think people are reacting to the transparency of the system that her work highlights. its really boring.
ReplyDeletegood for you cooky, its called a point of view...
ReplyDeleteLFL was a little gallery when Schutz started out. Cecily Brown used to be the person everyone hated then Matthew Barney. But the people who hire assistants to make everything for them never seem to take abuse. Because they are less threatening?
ReplyDeletepersonally i don't have much of a problem with assistants. i don't have alot of romance for craft, in say painting for me it is almost a part of the process and conceptually a big part of it for alot of Artist's.... Then there are director Artists social sculpture (Barney) vs say the "faux do it your self" video Artists who don't have any relationship with the tech. whom i deeply resent. maybe it comes from haveing done so much ghost editing. that sounds like a contradiction i guess.
ReplyDeleteFor Koons or Barney it doesn't contadict the work's intent. But a lot of people make traditional easel paintings they don't actually paint and don't admit to using assistants. I've been shocked by some of the names.
ReplyDeletei would love to see that list. i guess it is on a case by case basis, but i can relate.
ReplyDeleteDo tell...
ReplyDeletebtw PDog...thanks for alerting me to Howson. I like his expressionist energy and it's given me an idea about how to solve part of a painting I'm battling with....{I have no assistants to help...:]}
ReplyDeleteno problem, there are a whole bunch of Scottish painters from that period, the 80's who where doing some interesting work, Stephan Campbell, Ken Currie, Howson, Saville went to the same school as they did, only later. Glasgow school of art. They all had the same teacher.
ReplyDeleteA guy called Sandy Moffat.
How do I know all this you might ask, I used to live there.
Howson was better 10 years ago, he is born again. To much of the work he is doing now has this wierd religious aa stuff going on.
ReplyDeleteAlthough he did some very interesting drawings on the last days of Christ.
That's the thing I also know struggling painters who paint other people's paintings and don't want to get folks in trouble. I think the main artists should credit assistants on their resume. So why all the hate for Schutz?
ReplyDeleteWho kalm james or everyone else?
ReplyDeleteMe, I don't hate her, don't know her.
Like I said the work is ok, just not my cup of tea.
Not you Pdog it's just a conversation I've listened to a dozen times at gatherings of artists. People seem to really resent her success but she has worked for it. Not really my thing also but I respect it.
ReplyDeleteCould it be that because Saville doesn’t live in NYC folks can fantasize about her as the “other?”
ReplyDeleteI think most people have been to England, guy.
I havent, but uh, I did acid once and people's faces kind of glowed like a schutz. The faces divided into plains which, dreamlike, I interpreted to be muscle underneath the flesh.
Then I went to the toilet and the flushing water was a fractal - which it is - but it was slower somehow, but also, I couldnt grasp its form.
You do the math.
I know I have not been bitching about her.
ReplyDeleteshe had a show up here at the Rose art musem, it generated some WTF remarks.
A lot of people liked it as well.
I think a lot of this her gallery, which I wont go into much but I think that the owner Zack is well, doing some interesting marketing of her.
I don't think hes doing the right thing, but then again if it was me I would not being saying no. Sucsess is so much better than... and those people who you meet who are talking trash about her need to get a life or move to another city.
Her statement from that show was really lame though.
I'll say this for Saville most of what I have read that she has wrote on her work is very incitful and not full of MFA art speak, which Dana still has.
This local art writer(Charles Giuliano) wrote a very good article on her, while its critical but very well done.
www.maverick-arts.com/cgi-bin/MAVERICK?action=article&issue=237
Poons was pretty successful when he was young.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Saville is making mega bucks, as she does not seem to show a lot.
She teaches at the Slade school of art I think.
The other stuff is the dealers, its Schutz's dealer who's doing all this crap.
Hey I agree, I see burnout in her future, but I don't think if yuur really into being a painter that matters. Just make enough, invest well and keep working.
All I know is I wish I had a 1/4 the luck those women have and at any age.
Saville and Schutz are both way good. They don't have much in common other than being both women and to compare them using an united out-modem is a little off line. Whether one has a dozen assistants and the other ten feet in a bucket of ice to keep focused doesn't matter. The work speaks. That matters above the mind's plotsam jepson.
ReplyDeletePainterdog, you make me sleepy!
Zip wake me up before I doe-doe!
haha
ReplyDeleteJust an observation I think a lot of art dealers find the hype in the art market distasteful but feel they have to participate. Zach Fuer started out with a small space in Boston and for years LFL was almost an alternative space that showed young artists and not easily saleable installation art. His wife is a gifted artist. I think art dealers and artists enter the system out of a genuine love for art and get sucked up in the market.
ReplyDeleteZach Feuer is still a real cool guy! (not at kelli):Where do you get off implying hes doing any kind of "crap"? Dont gossip based on second hand observations pleeeaaaaassssseeeeeeeee
ReplyDeletewtf@#*%
I don't know him but I've seen Zach at Hunter College open studios taking the time to talk to students about their work and be supportive. The fact that people are successful ( Feuer or Schutz) does not mean they have lost touch or are not sincere about art.
ReplyDeleteI agree completely. Zach:"I try to bring the same energy to work every day, but it's impossible. I was a little naive when I did the apartment show, and was focused in idealism, now my life is more focused on logistics, but both are still really creative processes. I am no longer motivated by the same goals as the apartment show, I was trying to really do something outside of the system in Boston, something that was an alternative to the galleries and other spaces. Now, some days, I feel like I am more part of the system. My energy goes more towards promoting artists who I think will make a difference. It don't want my gallery to be the thing that changes the world, just the artists I represent (and it's my job to make it as easy for them to do that as possible). As the apartment show was really this personalized space, I hope my gallery is almost generic, and can be transformed anyway an artist sees fit, I'd hate to have a "look" for the gallery. I hope the apartment show spawns more projects, the more these alternative projects and curators get absorbed into the mainstream, the more exciting the mainstream becomes, to have the alternative become un-alternative, just means that things are progressing faster, it opens up more opportunities and gives me good justification for being a sell out (or at least becoming galleriest instead of a curator or artist)"
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteWell let me rephrase it then.
ReplyDeleteHe has stated that anyone buying Schutz's work must have it put into a museum.
Now maybe crap is the wrong word, I don't know him, I know people who do from Boston.
I meant the crap one deals with in the art business, not that he was doing crapy things.
But I do think that she(Schutz) is being pushed, come on a retrospective before the age of 40 is ridiculous, to me.
Pdog I don't think anybody meant you. You are lucky not to live in NY and listen to the conversation where artists ( many with trust funds) complain about another artist's success and people bash Schutz a lot. Maybe the pressure isn't healthy though.
ReplyDeleteZach's gallery was in Provincetown, not Boston. Yes he is a nice guy; ultimately a businessman, but nothing wrong with that. He has excellent instincts... a little cutthroat, but he genuinely loves art. Re: Schutz, Ageism can cut both ways. Plenty of creaky artists don't merit a retrospective at 70, some few deserve one at 30. Why not? She's pretty brilliant, IMO.
ReplyDeleteSaville is incredibly accomplished, but also quite literal/knowing, which is fine if there's humor mixed in, but the meat is a bit dry for my taste.
I love Jennys Work but I have areally hard time finding here on the internet.
ReplyDeletehere is a link to an unofficial site:
ReplyDeletewww.geocities.com/craigsjursen/index.html
www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/jenny_saville.htm
oh oh the geocities link stopped working...
ReplyDeletego to the saatchi gallery site.
Zach's a nice guy.
ReplyDelete