Jenny Saville’s “Propped” (1992)
In her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, film theorist Laura Mulvey demonstrates how Hollywood films are constructed to pleasure the patriarchal male audience, capitalizing on their desire to be active voyeurs of women. Mulvey’s analysis of the male gaze also applies to visual art. Historically, the female nude has been objectified as a subject to be looked at by the male artist and audience. Like a film’s male protagonist, the male artist “[commands] a stage of spatial illusion in which he articulates the look and creates the action” (Footnote 1). When the male viewer gazes at the nude painting, he sees not a woman, but another male’s idealized depiction of a woman.
Inspired by writings of female feminists, contemporary British painter Jenny Saville’s work has long challenged the male, heterosexual visual pleasure that Mulvey says must be dismantled. Her 1992 painting “Propped” depicts her naked body atop a phallic stool. Her hands forcefully grip her thighs and her arms push her breasts together. Unlike paintings that portray an idealized female form, Saville’s is an unglorified display of flesh, fat, and muscle. She embraces the body’s imperfections, drawing attention to blemishes that are magnified by the painting’s 7-by-6-foot scale. The subject is angled such that the viewer looks upward at her, and she stares back at them, imposing dominance. Through this, Saville challenges society’s discomfort of female fatness and sexuality, breaking the idea that the female subject must not only fit constricting beauty standards but also be submissive. Additionally, Saville uses strong pigments and heavy, gestural brushstrokes to highlight the skin’s texture and emphasize the figure’s weight. They bring the subject to life, adding vitality to the artwork that discomforts the viewer who has been accustomed to a passive female subject. The painting shatters representations of female beauty in the Western art history canon.
Often overlooked is Saville’s choice of oil paint as a medium. Saville’s practice is influenced by “Old Masters” such as Titian and Rubens who depicted idealized female nudes in their paintings. Saville took what she learned from these artists and used their same tools to paint herself from a female perspective. Symbolically, she reclaims the female figure from the male gaze. This is crucial because, in fine art, the person who profits is the storyteller. (Footnote 2). They hold the power to shape the narrative while the subject remains silent. By telling her own story, Saville takes power away from the art world’s patriarchy.
This sentiment is most clearly expressed in the quote that Saville carves across her canvas by feminist writer Luce Irigaray: “if we continue to speak in this sameness — speak as men have spoken for centuries, we will fail each other”. The uplifting text is mirrored as if it were more targeted at the subject than at the viewer. Saville encourages other women to speak for themselves and stop letting men dictate how they should be. Summarily, Saville’s “Propped” challenges the traditional artistic representation of female nudes, making her voice heard in an overly male-dominated art world.
Footnotes:
1. Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen, Volume 16, Issue 3, Autumn 1975, Pages 6–18, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6
2. Later in her career, Saville would paint portraits of mothers and children inspired by da Vinci and Michelangelo, but this time from the viewpoint of a woman who has experienced motherhood and childbirth.
Image source:
Saville, Jenny. “Propped”. ART Critique, published 31 October 2018, https://www.art-critique.com/en/2018/10/jenny-savilles-propped-female-worth-in-the-art-market/, Accessed 20 May 2021.
