JENNY SAVILLE IN FLORENCE

With Corona variants flying all over the world, you’re probably not, so let’s take an armchair trip to Florence to see the Jenny Saville exhibition.  

We trained up to Florence on October 20, just to see it, and despite missing the “fast” train and having to take the “locale,” which extended a one-hour trip into 2.5 excruciating hours, it was well worth it.  The exhibition runs until February 20 of next year, so—virus permitting--you might be able to catch it (no pun intended).

The exhibition is promoted by the Municipality of Florence and supported by Gagosian (Saville's gallery).  It is sited at five different venues:  the Museo Novecento, a public museum; the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, a city museum; the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, ultimately a Vatican operation; the Museo degli Innocenti, a private charitable museum; and the Museo di Casa Buonarroti, (as in Michelangelo), another private museum.  Because of the various public, religious, and private institutions involved in the planning and execution of this show, there was apparently a failure to come to terms on how to divide the box office spoils.  As a consequence, the organization of the exhibition is conspicuous by its lack:  No site map, no catalogue, and no single ticket, although your ticket, if bought at the Museo Novecento, brought discounts at the other four venues. Nonetheless, in spite of the disorganization, the show was simply outstanding.

If you don’t know Jenny Saville (self-portrait and photo above), here’s a quick summary from her Wiki:

Jennifer Anne Saville RA (born 7 May 1970) is a contemporary British painter and an original member of the Young British Artists. She is known for her large-scale painted depictions of nude women. Saville has been credited with originating a new and challenging method of painting the female nude and reinventing figure painting for contemporary art. Saville works and lives in Oxford, England.

[She was] awarded a six-month scholarship to the University of Cincinnati where she enrolled in a course in women's studies. Saville was exposed to gender political ideas and renowned feminist writers. Saville states that during her time in Cincinnati, she saw "Lots of big women. Big white flesh in shorts and T-shirts. It was good to see because they had the physicality that I was interested in" – a physicality that she partially credits to Pablo Picasso, an artist that she sees as a painter that made subjects as if "they were solidly there ... not fleeting."

I also see the influence of Lucien Freud (below) in her fleshy paintings

and Francis Bacon (below), too, in the way she applies paint to the canvas and the unusual colors she uses to render flesh.

(Parenthetically, Saville lived for a time in a decrepit palazzo on Via Maqeda in Palermo, near the train station (always an iffy location) and the Ballaro’ open-air market (this one a bit dicey).  Apparently the city was too much even for a tough cookie like Saville and she sold up and moved back to England.)

What attracts me to Saville's art is that, although her work is figurative, it is at the same time somewhat abstract.  What I mean by that is that her portraits are clear and distinct from a distance, but they disintegrate into drips and slashes of paint—often an impasto—when you move closer to them.  She is clearly in love with the medium and how to get it onto the canvas, as you can see in the details from her paintings below. 

 

I am also in absolute awe of her draftsmanship. 

You often see these graphic elements in her paintings, like the cartoon sketches in her Byzantium at the Museo degli Innocenti, which has an almost Eadweard Muybridge kinetic quality of stop-motion in the figures' rendering. 

And I find her willingness to "cut off their heads" indicative of her artistic maturity, a kind of "I don't give a damn" attitude, very appealing.  She paints what she wants to paint, emphasizes what she thinks important, and leaves it to you to fill in the blanks.

Here are more works from the series of monumental portraits of everyday Amazonians hung at the Museo Novecento.  The figures are bigger than life size, adding artistic weight to their humanity.

                     

 

 

But the pièce de résistance at the Museo Novecento may be this portrait of Saville's blind friend, Rosetta II (2005-2006).  The on-line description of the exhibition describes Saville's portrayal of her as a "blind cantor or a mystic in ecstatic concentration."

Thinking that these portraits would be a hard act to follow, we decided to stop for lunch at our favorite Florentine trattoria, which our former financial advisor introduced us to in 2005.  It didn't disappoint. 

Sated and satisfied, we walked to the next venue on the list, the Palazzo Vecchio, the city hall of Florence and once the seat of the Medici's power.

We passed through this imposing courtyard before entering the building proper

where we encountered Saville's monumental work Fulcrum (1998-1999) displayed in the Salone delle Battaglie.  As the online exhibition notes say, 

Fulcrum is comparable to the language of sculpture, given the work's monumental dimensions [2.6 x 4.8 meters, or 8.45 x 15.6 feet] and the plasticity of the figures.  The entire surface of the painting is occupied by the bodies, by flesh; the faces and individualities of the three women are barely distinguishable.

Again, shades of the Freud above, with notes of carefree decapitation and knee-capping, too!

 

Right around the corner from the Palazzo Vecchio is the Duomo (above).  Unfortunately, the line was too long there to even think about getting into its museum, and in addition we were five minutes too late to enter the Casa di Buonarroti.  This was especially disappointing, because Saville was paired in both venues with works in marble by Michelangelo, including his Bandini Pieta' (below). 

Oh, well.  Sometimes--often--that's just how sightseeing goes.  Onward to the Ospedale degli Innocenti  (below), an orphanage for abandoned children dating from 1419 and its museum,

where we saw Saville's Byzantium pictured above.  Unlike Michelangelo's marble which graces the Vatican, this pieta' seemed more like an icon with its gold leafed background and its Madonna's rather flat, archaic face.  

Appropriate to its former function as an orphanage, Saville's works at the Museo degli Innocenti embody the theme of motherhood.  In addition to Byzantium, she showed Mother and Children (After the Leonardo Cartoon) (below, 2008).  This painting reminds me of something a friend of mine once confided:  “One child is a delight; two children means being a mother.”   

This work was paired with an ethereal terracotta Madonna and Child (below) by Luca della Robbia (1445-1450)

and Botticelli's sublime Madonna and Child with an Angel (below, 1465-1467).

All that art work and the approaching cocktail hour, not to mention our train back to Castiglion Fiorentino, led us to wander back toward the train station, passing chic tea rooms

 and confiseries of Piazza della Repubblica

on our way to Palazzo Strozzi, where Jeff Koons had installed a gigantic royal blue balloon puppy in the courtyard (below).  

Settling in at a table for two on the edge of the courtyard, we were just about to order an aperitivo when we were abruptly informed that the bar was closing in five minutes for a private party.  Okay then, a couple of photos, and moving on to Plan B. 

We’d always wanted to stop at the Panini Tartufati Alimentari di Lusso, a swank Old Florence bar, so this afternoon we did.  (Tartufati means truffled.)

Shortly after we were comfortably seated at an outdoor table, Aperol Spritzes in hand, we watched as a woman unsuccessfully tried to get her dog past the front door of the bar.  

Although I couldn't identify him as one of the 15 breeds of truffle-hunting dogs,  apparently he thinks he's quite accomplished in this field and was convinced that a truffle would be forthcoming if he just sat there and waited.  The other waiter, whom the dog seemed to be waiting for, came out and assured the dog that he was out of luck that evening.  Clearly disappointed, the dog finally gave up and trotted off with his mistress in tow.

It was getting late as we left the bar.  The way to the train station took us once again past the Museo Novecento and then across the piazza to Santa Maria Novella (below),

where the famous Giotto crucifix (below, 1288-1289)

hangs opposite and in sight of Saville’s Rosetta II.  The blind woman can be seen day and night through an open doorway in the small chapel incorporated into the museum.  Unfortunately, the crucifix is not visible behind the closed door of the church, another victim of poor exhibit coordination.  Be that as it may, this pairing of crucifixes signals a silent dialogue between art works from across time, speaking of communion and suffering over more than 700 years. 

Despite our flesh--be it painted, sculpted, or actual--we are all, in the end, fragile.  Our strength comes from our compassion and our appreciation of the body of work we call humanity.

Keep it real!  And wear your damn mask!

Marilyn