Welcome to “…is that art? Friday” week 4!
Following this week's art review, the chosen article for this week's art forum is about the British artist Jenny Saville as a celebration of women artists in a fight against stereotypes and equality.
Jenny Saville is mostly known as the artist that does the disgusting paintings of fat women. The Cambridge born artist has spent her artistic career exploring the "imperfections of the flesh", questioning how we perceive the human body and the stereotypes developed over the decades. Saville's body of work is mostly recognized for this one self-portrait titled "Propped" (1992). This massive oil painting magnifies the woman body in an immersive raw experience through an honest representation of the woman body.
The artist mentions how she grew up in an era where everyone had a cultural obsession with the body, which is still something we carry on with today, although 40 years later. As I mentioned in Insolnia's art review this week, Instagram has had a huge impact on acknowledging how we perceive beauty nowadays. The media has been portraying these skinny, perfect skin/hair day young girls while promoting a plastic beauty culture. Cultivating these conceptions while avoiding the raw truth of what makes us all equal through imperfections, will eventually increase mental health issues and discrimination.
With her strong layered paintings, the artists have raised awareness and empowered women to be who they are with no shame or regret. Not only Saville raised awareness of how women are perceived but also she managed to give hope to women artists to continue to work for an acclaimed future. Saville is known as the artist that broke the record for selling the most expensive painting by a living women artist in 2018 at Sotheby's. Her male seeling opponent at the time was Jeff Koons with a £35.9 million difference. As mentioned in Art Critique, "the lack of female artwork in auction houses (...) highlights the inherent bias in the art market and in our collective culture against women and their work." The fact that Saville managed to sell Propped by £9.5 million was a huge step in the industry for women artists. The market is still largely male nowadays, which is still an upsetting truth. An article published by Art Net suggests that "just 11 percent of all museum acquisitions over the past decade have been of work by women". Although the arts are mostly connected with stereotypes often connected with feminine traits as sensitivity and emotion, most of the artists that are successful are still male.
How do you explain these facts? What are women artists doing differently in comparison to male artists? How can we raise awareness of women artists in the art market? What needs to change?
Let me know your opinion in the comments😉
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More Info
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-jenny-saville-changed-way-view-female-form-painting
https://nmwa.org/support/advocacy/get-facts/
https://gagosian.com/artists/jenny-saville/