'I have to really work at the tension between getting the paint to have the sensory quality that I want and be constructive in terms of building the form of a stomach, for example, or creating the inner crevice of a thigh. The more I do it, the more the space between abstraction and figuration becomes interesting. I want a painting realism. I try to consider the pace of a painting, of active and quiet areas. Listening to music helps a lot, especially music where there’s a hard sound and then soft breathable passages. In my earlier work my marks were less varied. I think of each mark or area as having the possibility of carrying a sensation.' -- Jenny Saville
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Jenny Saville interviewed
Jenny Saville is an English painter and a leading Young British Artist (YBA). Saville is best known for her monumental images of women. Saville does not meet the usual public perception of the YBAs as she has dedicated her career to traditional figurative oil painting. Her painterly style has been compared to that of Lucian Freud and Rubens. Her paintings are usually much larger than life size. They are strongly pigmented and give a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin as well as the mass of the body. She sometimes adds marks onto the body, such as white "target" rings.
Since her debut in 1992, Saville's focus has remained on the female body, slightly deviating into subjects with "floating or indeterminant gender," painting large scale paintings of transsexuals and transvestites. Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states and transgender patients. Her painting 'Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face)' appeared on the cover of Manic Street Preachers' third album, The Holy Bible. Further to this, 'Stare' (2005) features as the cover of the ninth Manic Street Preachers album 2009 Journal For Plague Lovers. Saville works and lives between London and Palermo, and is a tutor of figure painting at the Slade School of Art.
Elton John: How do you approach the process of painting?
Jenny Saville: I tend to think about each section of a painting in terms of musical passages. I work on areas like one meter by one meter, so I'll think, I've got to get across the nose or the stomach of the pig or whatever; how am I going to play it? So I mix up all the colors and think of them as if they were tones. And then I think, How am I going to play that brush mark? Am I going to play it hard, next to some fiddly brush marks? I think of it like that.
EJ: Of all the painters around today, when your name comes up people always say the same thing - she can really paint. I've heard people compare your work to Lucian Freud's and to Francis Bacon's.
JS: I probably look at Bacon and [Willem] de Kooning more than Freud. De Kooning is my main man, really, because he just did everything you can do with paint. He reversed it, dripped it, scraped it. But I want to hold on to a certain amount of reality.
EJ: A couple of the paintings in the Gagosian show looked as if they depicted people who had been injured in an explosion.
JS: Yes. One of them was from a suicide bombing in Israel. I didn't want the painting to have a political edge of a specific time and place, but I've had the image [in my archives] for years. September 11, 2001, just put it right there in front of my face; then I felt I had to do it.
EJ: Do you think we live in an ugly world?
JS: Oh, fantastical-fantastically ugly. [both laugh] Everything is sort of a fantasy. There's no truth, just a series of lies.
EJ: What kind of films do you watch?
JS: I love Andrei Tarkovsky, Michelangelo Antonioni--people like that have a visual poetry. But I'm dying to see The Matrix Reloaded. I like movies like that, too. With a film or a piece of music, there's always a beginning and an end - with a painting you don't have that. You have the beginning and the end of the activity of making the painting. But as a viewer, you don't see my whole activity; you see only the final surface. So it's like getting all the notes all at the same time, the whole sound.
EJ: So, how long does it take you, from start to finish, to do a painting?
JS: About 18 months.
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p.s. Hey. It's my last full day in Brest, and it's going to be even more packed with work than the other days. 'TIHYWD' is proving to be a very difficult piece to put in place. Just in terms of the technical aspects alone, it's a much more immense vehicle than we'd anticipated, and this is our last shot until we head back here for more work in a few weeks. It'll be fine in the end, but whoa. I'm kind of exhausted, a little stressed out, and I have an annoying back ache plus headache combo this morning, if you can't tell. So, I'll be moving quickly as per usual. One more necessarily rushed p.s. tomorrow, and then things will turn normal on my end again for a while starting on Wednesday. Onwards. ** Friday ** xTx, Hey. Very nice to have you here. I'm a fan of your stuff, so, yeah, thanks a lot. ** Sypha, Oh, I think it went okay. The movie shoot, I mean. I guess I'll tell what there is to tell to my day-sharer Itmpw down below. ** Kier, Hey! Yeah, I saw an email from you in my box, thank you a ton! I've been so swamped with work here that I haven't opened it or any other email in three days, but I'll have some freedom soon. ** David, Hey. Oh, I'll check my FB inbox. Thanks! I'm even more behind on that mailbox than my non-FB one. I'm either hearty or hale -- I can't tell which -- but not both. The Scottish play? I'm not sure what you mean. The film I'm in is definitely not a remake of a play. ** Put The Lotion In The Basket, Hey, Nick. I love riding the TGV too, but having spent twenty hours on trains in less than a week, I'm down for a trial separation. How was your weekend then? ** Crispin Best, Hey. Listen, it was nothing but a total honor and gift on this end, man. Major kudos. ** Magick Mike, Yeah, me too re: Reading a lot more Laporte. He seems very up Dalkey's alley, so maybe they'll hook into his oeuvre at some point. Hope so. ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, nice, some extra Karina and you. Everyone, there's yet a bit more to read out there from the tete a tete between the great Godard, et. al. actor Anna Karina and the great David Ehrenstein, and it's here. ** Bill, Behind but relaxed ... no small victory, that. Enjoy. ** Chris, Hey, man! Yeah, the 'Them' news seems all very good. So you're heading to the Caribbean? Wtf. Not bad at all. Take care. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey. Yeah, I had a nice ... well, who knows, but I had a day report for you the last time we talked that got eaten up by Blogger, and now it's lost to memory or lack thereof, so I'll just start with this report with the weekend. Let's see ... oh, so I acted in that Christophe Honore movie. A car took me out to the apartment building in the Paris suburbs where my parts were being shot. First I was fixed with a bit of make up, nothing noticeable, just enough to kill any shininess, I guess. Then I was escorted to the set, which was an odd, art filled apartment supposedly belonging to my character. First they shot a scene in the stairwell where I run into this character named Omar, ask him how his trip to NYC was, and try to weasel some information out of him about another character, Emmanuel, played by Francois Sagat, but he brushes me off and leaves, which displeases my character greatly. It was all improvised, and after six or seven takes, it was decided we'd nailed the scene. Then most of the day was taken up with the shooting of a long scene in the apartment. It starts with Emmanuel ringing the doorbell, hoping to trade sex for money, which is kind of a routine thing for his character and mine. There's a boy in the apartment whom I just fucked and whom I think I gave money to, and the boy brushes by Emmanuel and out the door. I let Emmanuel in. He strips and starts posing, trying to turn me on. I tell him to stop and then deliver this longish dialogue where I critique him aesthetically, declaring him kitschy and without depth -- it's too complicated to explain -- and, long story short, I tell him I'll give him money if, first, he beats the shit out of boy who just left the apartment, and, secondly, he'll get the money if when he comes back to see me afterwards his having done such a cruel and undeserving thing has damaged him emotionally to the extent that, when I look at him, it makes me cry. (That's not a very good explanation, sorry). He's freaked out and says he doesn't know if he can do it. I make him listen to an old song by Charles Aznavour while he decides, and then I hand him some money, and he takes it, meaning he's either going to do it or wants me to think he will. Anyway, it was fascinating to do, and quite fun. With all the different takes and needing to shoot the scene from multiple angles, it took hours to get the scene down. Christophe seemed to like what I did, and I guess we'll see when the movie is finished. It premieres in October at the Locarno Film Festival. By the time I got back home, it was late, and I was fried, so I crashed. Then I had a 7:30 am train on Saturday, which got me to Brest about 2 pm. I went to the theater and dove straight back into work on 'TIHYWD'. We had a partial run-through later in the afternoon, and the piece is starting to focus now. The long fog and holographic effects section, which was the main point of concentration yesterday, and which occupies a big chunk of the middle of 'TIHYWD', is very trippy. It's a shame that my camera is too crappy to capture what it looks like. I tried, but the photos are just black blurs. This last run-through made it clear to me that a long text I've written for the fog/effects section doesn't work, so I'm going to have to write a whole new text. I worked on it the rest of the day, and then continued working on it Sunday, hoping to have a rough version finished so we can record a demo of it to try out today. Also, we've realized that one really crucial section that we're calling the epiphany and which needs to be the big emotional peak/summation of the piece isn't working at all, and it's going to need to be completely reinvented from scratch. Since Gisele is almost totally occupied at the moment by the fog and holographic effects, which are a kind of lumbering beast that resist being trained to do the precise, delicate things we want, I'm in charge of the epiphany problem for now. Additionally on Sunday, the bird trainer arrived, and we spent a lot of the afternoon working on the section of the piece in which the live birds will appear. The birds (owl and hawk) weren't behaving all that well, and we might need to change things a bit if they don't become more relaxed by today. It was a long, long day, and I didn't get back to my hotel until after midnight. I slept weird or something because I woke up today with a fucked up back and a bad, accompanying headache. This morning, as soon as I arrived at the theater about an hour ago, there was a big crisis re: the piece that's too long and complicated to go into, but that's why I'm stressed out and particularly tired at the moment. So that's my weekend as best I can tell it this morning. Like I said, one more full day of work here, maybe a little more work tomorrow morning if necessary, and then I'm back to Paris finally. And, so, how was your Monday? ** JW Veldhoen, You repaired now? ** Misanthrope, Howdy. ** Irene/Dorna, Yeah, the weekend was pretty good, but, wow, am I beat this morning. I think it's all the traveling as much as anything else. If it's any consolation, I doubt Charlotte Gainsbourg made it to Coachella unless she was already there. This no fly stuff is getting really serious over here. Yeah, a new Godard film at Cannes this year! How great is that? Okay, love to you, pal. ** Reynard, And I think well moistened eyes is one of the signs of the Anti-you-know-who. So, you really, really lost. But I didn't even try, so who the fuck am I to talk. Anyway, blah blah, always a pleasure to have you here, sir. ** Weekend ** Misanthrope, Hey. Oh, it never occurred to me that your goatse quip could be offensive. But now that you mention it, ha ha... no, sweat it not. Sgt. Slaughter. That's an oldie but goldie wrestler for you. Oh, yeah, I'm sure Hollywood's going to be knocking down my door after they see me do my thing. Maybe I can replace Charlie Sheen on whatever that awful show is called. ** David Ehrenstein, Happy Monday, sir. Your Fantomas FaBlog post is fantastic! ** Alan, Hey. ** David, I'm not huge on MGMT, but they're more interesting than just eye candy for sure. Sagat is a pretty shy and sensitive guy. Very nice, reserved, a bit insecure. He did some very nice, subtle emotional stuff with his face in the scene we did together. Oh, let me pass on your query. Everyone, please listen up, here's our friend David with a request: 'Two queries addressed to everybody, at least any crime / detective /mystery fiction readers. (1) I need a new (to me) c/d/m writer for my summer's pleasure. Last summer I blazed through many Westlake / Stark books. I really enjoyed Westlake and got strung out on Stark and his thief Parker. Are the Red Riding novels as riveting as the RR films? I'll try anything except series that MUST be read in order of publication. I hate that in a mystery. (2) Does anyone have a copy of volume 2 of Simon Callow's Welles biography? I found vol.1 at Sally Army and bought it, not noticing it ended with Citizen Kane. I have all sorts of books and vinyl ( to a lesser amount) and will trade.' ** Thomas Moronic, Oh, you're most welcome, Thomas. At the moment the theater shape is pulling me out of shape. ** Empty Frame, Hey, man. Thursday or Friday should work just fine. Yeah, send me your phone number, and I'll send you my cell phone number in return. My address: dcooperweb @ gmail.com. We'll sort out a meeting straight away. ** Math, Hey, pal. I'm glad you're on the upswing. Jesus. The strobe did most of that to you? Nice you saw Crystal Castles, but at such a cost. Yeah, rest up and eat health incarnate for the next week. That's an order. ** Jesse Hudson, Hey, Jesse! Man, that books-equals-writing ideas talk is Super Furry Animals to my ears. Very exciting to hear about. When I'm not doing this theater thing, I'm a monk these days too, in Paris no less. Loveliness to see you, J. Talk to you soon, no doubt about it. ** Killer Luka, Damn, you've been sick too like Math. And here I am griping about a back/head ache. That sucks about Steadman, but surely there'll be another opportunity assuming anyone outside of Europe can ever fly there again. No, I didn't play the Louis Garrell part. I'm a slightly evil geezer aesthete. No, I didn't sing, but Charles Aznavour did. ** _Black_Acrylic, Those Cazal shades are ... hm, wow. Which style are you going for? For 99 cents, it's not like you can lose, right? Hey, if they were good enough for Utah Saints, I mean ... come on. ** Pisycaca, Oh, Montse! Hi, my dear friend. I've been thinking so much about you! Yeah, clearly, you did everything you could, and talks of the heart and resolutions like you had with your dad are the most and best that can happen, I guess. To move so quickly from his passing to helping your aunt must have been really difficult. I guess having something intensive to do might have helped you sort of forge through the roughest part, if there's a bright side to be found. I hope it can be worked out with her and the rest home since, obviously, you really need some peace and your own life back now, pal. Although it's incredibly good of you to have helped her. Wow, Montse, that's so much to deal with! All the love in the world to you, always, but particularly now. I'm fine, just too busy at this very moment, but of course that's a gift. Take good care, M., and keep us/me up how things are going if you can and don't mind. ** Little foal, Nice weekend there, man. Yeah, the moment when one's parents find out one is a 'sick fuck' is pretty, err, interesting, as I well remember myself, ha ha, but the cool thing with having them find out via your writing is the counter strike: since your writing is being admired, published, etc., it's a stronger and more positive force than any negative thing they can say to you. You know, to attack your 'sickness' is to attack your art, your future, the very thing that is making your life happier and more of a success. So, yeah. Hope you have a great time with your other friend today whatever happens. ** Steevee, I've heard of Rasoulof. Maybe because of the very film/story you tell. The film does sound beautiful. I guess it's kind of like with Parajanov's great 'Color of Pomegranates'. It got him sent to Siberia, I think, but watching it, it's so ellipitical and poetic that you can't figure out what possibly could have been so offensive. Anyway, I'll keep my eyes open for that film, thanks! ** Sypha, It's a short -- but not all that short -- film by this French film director Christophe Honore ('Les chansons d'amour', 'Dans Paris', Ma mere', 'La belle personne', etc.). It's kind of experimental, largely improvised, but narrative. ** Justin, No, Sagat is definitely not my type, but then again I'm not completely myself in the film, even though I think the character I play is kind of a reference to my books. Very nice about Derek Dunbar sending you those figures. Yeah, I'd love to see the sketches, for sure. ** JW Veldhoen, Oh, 'un-', that's good to hear. ** Chris, Thanks, Great and utterly unsurprising news that the gig with Tim worked out so well. Mm, a cup of tea would hit my spot too. ** Tomkendall, You cooking, interesting. That's not a thing I would have imagined you doing without some coaxing. I wonder if the French mumble. Hm, they must. Im going to pay more attention. You ought (not) to try mumbling in Dutch sometime. Now that's a crossed swords of an idea if there is one. Great to see you, T. I'm working on my novel as diligently as I can. ** And now I'm off to work again. The post: someone requested that I do a show by Saville in my galerie, and I was more than happy to do so. See what you think. See you tomorrow, and take it easy until then.
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