“The contemplation of beauty and pleasure are deeply embedded in Western tradition of aesthetics. Despite their marginal position within this tradition, many women artists have continued with the practice of contemplating beauty and pleasure and their multiple and contested meanings. Scottish painter Jenny Saville (b. 1970) falls squarely within this tradition. Her work interrogates assumptions about beauty by depicting bodies that are not at all beautiful.
... Although Saville frequently asserts that she simply sees beauty 'differently,' a comment in a recent interview modifies that claim. She explains:'I don't make paintings for people to say we should look at big bodies again and say they are beautiful. I think that it's more that they are difficult. Why do we find bodies like this difficult to look at?' (Drohojowska-Philp 2002).”
Jenny Saville and a
Feminist Aesthetics of Disgust
For a long time women have lived under the idea of the “perfect body”shaped by the male gaze. With social media and digital characters everywhere, body and beauty anxieties have only grown.
At the same time many artists and designers are breaking away from this idea of perfection. They show bodies as they really are, sometimes raw, sometimes messy, but always real. Their work reminds us to question why digital creations so often look flawless.Every image is built on trial and error, on humanimperfection. The most powerful choice we can make is to embrace the imperfect around us.
