The Body: Jenny Saville and Orlan

The human body has been an object of study for many centuries both in and outside of the art world. The body has long been cause for curiosity and religious debate. Many cultures believe that it is our outer shell, or our body, in which our soul dwells in. Some cultures use the body as a status symbol. The Greeks’ art work depicted the ideal body figures. They showed the figures young and healthy, without flaw. The Greeks believed that is was these humans, the ones without flaw that were designed in the image of the gods. This belief can still be seen in main stream media today. While the body styles have changed, the idea that these ideal figures are in the "image of the gods" is still prevalent. Jenny Saville and Orlan are two feminist artists who have faced the idea of the ideal image within their work.

A painter, Jenny Saville is known for her nude portrayal of the female figure. Using foreshortening and other methods, Saville manipulates the figure to appear larger, accentuating certain aspects of the figure. Having spent time shadowing a plastic surgeon, taking photographs and observing his surgeries, Saville's work shows her understanding of the manipulations possible to the human flesh. She uses the figure's body like one would use paint, a necessary requirement for the piece (Elton John). By doing this, the figure's body becomes one with the canvas. It has become the manipulated article within the piece much like a canvas is within a painting, the two are now singular. With her directing each stroke of the paintbrush, Saville brings up the argument that "battles over bodies generally boil down to the question: Who should be in control? Who is in charge of how we see a body, when we see it, and what it means to us when we see it?" (McDaniel 80). With each contortion, Saville brings up the question of the ideal body, that what we are looking at is not what is perfect, so what are we looking at and why? By answering these questions, Saville hopes that the viewer will in time learn to appreciate the value of sight to the individual viewer. That not everything is meant to be ideal, created in the image of the gods, but yet that with curves and the grandiosity that can come with flesh, there can be beauty.

Orlan, a French artist, is known for her art performance pieces that have to do with her series of plastic surgeries. Orlan had her surgeries videotaped and shown in various galleries. Like Saville, Orlan wanted to show the manipulation of the body. How the flesh could be contorted and sculpted in various ways. One of her goals was to show the similarities between plastic surgery and sculpting. Unlike Saville, she was not making a stand on the body image restraints that society places on women. For Orlan, these series of performance pieces were about identity and embracing the idea of constant change for oneself. Having filmed her surgeries she allowed others to watch her body and, in a sense, her identity change. It has been said that "because women's sexual side had been repressed and unacknowledged for so long, artists at the outset used a sort of shock therapy to claim female sexuality as a theme" (McDaniel 79). While Orlan's work does not necessary represent the sexual restraints that have been placed on women, she does however express her views on human identity in a way that had not been expressed before. It was this shock therapy that got both Orlan's and Saville's work acknowledge in the first hand, both for their almost grotesque portrayal of the female body but also for their unique way in which they both interpret the human body.

"Brain-Juice Biography of Jenny Saville." Brain-Juice.com, Inc. Web. 26 Jan. 2010. http://www.brain-juice.com/cgi-bin/show_bio.cgi?p_id=77.

Elton John "Jenny Saville: whether they love her work, hate her work, or simply don't know what to make of it, one thing everyone seems to be in agreement on is that this painter is one of the most daring of our time. Elton John gets the story". Interview. FindArticles.com. 26 Jan, 2010. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_9_33/ai_108050851/

"Jenny Saville - Gagosian Gallery." Current Exhibitions - Gagosian Gallery. Web. 27 Jan. 2010. http://www.gagosian.com/artists/jenny-saville/.

"Jenny Saville -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 27 Jan. 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Saville.

McDaniel, Craig, and Jean Robertson. Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art after 1980. 2nd ed. Oxford UP, 2010. Print.

"Orlan -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 26 Jan. 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlan.

"Orlan's art of sex and surgery Art and design guardian.co.uk." Latest news, comment and reviews from the Guardian. Web. 27 Jan. 2010. .