Cambridge-born Jenny Saville may be a realist at heart, but her work is just the kind of stuff that fascinates me; it's gross, exaggerated, and more than a little creepy. Her figures are often violently afflicted with scars and swelling, with sickening color palettes that combine morbid, viscous reds with lifeless pastel tones. But more often than not, there is beauty in the rawness of her figures.

Conceptually, the paintings also make an interesting statement about body image, aggressively challenging the tried-and-true imagery of beautiful women loved by painters throughout history. Saville remarks being "fascinated" by flesh and fat, and uses her work to explore it fully, both from a positive standpoint that celebrates its attractiveness as well as a negative one that slices and objectifies the bodies; the first image below, Plan, evokes the idea of cosmetic surgery. Artist Patricia Cronin says, "The scale of her figures indicates the psychological space the body takes up in our collective psyches -- we are obsessed with diets, nutrition, physical fitness, health, vanity, self-esteem."

Plan, 1993

An aspect of art that I've always been excited by is its capacity to distort reality to reach the real "truth" of our personal perception. Thus, I'm a huge fan of the fish-eye perspective Saville uses to show the immensity of her chubby women. I find the largeness of these figures makes their bodies not so ugly but rather impressive for their strength and volume; they aren't defined by their silhouettes (as is the intended purpose of using skinny models) but rather by the internal undulating of their muscle and fat. The forms have a lot of character and humanity; they look tangible. This is aided by some of the loose, sculptural brushwork Saville has adopted from abstract artists, whom she says have "taught [her] a lot about the physical act of painting, about pace and tempo, using drips and marks in ways that aren’t just decorative.”

Propped, 1992

Still, there are works of Saville's that I really dislike, mostly her portraits, for failing to depict unattractive people or a wider variety of facial types. I feel certain pieces are fetishized for her already-established audience rather than experimental and confrontational. It doesn't help when the depictions try too hard to look detached, cool and edgy, as I feel is the case with Reverse. The technique and colors of this piece are stunning, but the woman has the expressive sincerity of a fashion model, and the puffiness of her glistening mouth looks like an erotic choice that embraces violence rather than forsakes it. Whether or not this is intentional, I think the exaggerated bodies she is known for are much stronger and more unique images.

Reverse, 2003