Women In Jenny Saville's Objectification Of Women

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For centuries, the objectification of women has become the norm, forever portraying them as submissive and passive for the benefit of the male gaze. Eternally capsulated in a world, perfected, unanimously the viewer and viewed alike. Jenny Saville defies expectations in creating the female nude with herself as both subject and painter. Taking on the roles given to women by men and making them her own, Saville elevates the status of women by making them their own judge of beauty. Kenneth Clark, a renowned art historian of his time, believed to create a form of art, the nude must be reformed and not directly recorded from life. In doing so, scouring away all evidence of the woman before the painting, before being perfected.
“Propped” is painted
By doing so, they can clear their conscience by believing the woman to be a “sight”, nothing more than a viewing implement to sate their desires, “thus turning herself into an object…and most particularly an object of vision: a sight” (1972:47). Jenny Saville in her piece “Propped” also uses a mirror but as a tool of empowerment, rather than a process of demeaning herself. Saville, also the viewer, has positioned the mirror between both aspects of herself, allowing the mirror to break the voyeurism of the male gaze. With an insubordinate expression on her face, she dares anyone to try and take away her own right to her body. Berger, through exploring Reuben’s work completely describes the intention of Saville “her body confronts us, not as an immediate sight, but an experience” (1972:61) declaring Saville to be more than an object or sight, to be a woman capable of knowing her own self and mind. Scrawled across the mirror, reflected on to Saville’s body is the quote “If we continue to speak in the sameness, speak as men have spoken for centuries, we will fail each other again” (Noel, 2013). She has done this to remind women that men have judged the “perfect” female form too long, that it is time for

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