JENNY SAVILLE | Territories

First edition, first printing hardcover catalogue of Jenny Saville's first US solo exhibition in 1999 : "Jenny Saville: Territories" at the Gagosian Gallery, New York.

A total of 26 four-color plates: Six large paintings are reproduced in exacting color along with numerous blow-up details. It also contains plates of fourteen earlier pieces executed between 1992 and 1997, a two-page gatefold, and an interview with Saville by Martin Gayford. Essay by Del LaGrace Volcano. Text by Barry Martin Weintraub. Studio photographs by Glen Luchford. Beige linen cloth-covered boards with title stamped in white on cover and spine; no dust jacket as issued.

Very close to as-new in condition. A few very minor imperfections can be found. Fine condition overall.

"Saville has been recognized as one of the most thought-provoking and technically accomplished talents of her generation. In this long awaited exhibition [her first solo show], the distinctive nature of Saville's giant, fleshy nudes is both surprising and provocative; virtuoso nudes, reminiscent of the old masters', yet employed to question societal obsession with an idealized, almost robotic, image of the female form. By portraying these 'images of extreme humanness' that are so out of place in an anxious culture obsessed with eternal youth and beauty, Saville confronts the very essence of what it means to have an active mind in a decaying, dying body. Characteristic of Saville's work, her paint becomes flesh as it evokes the feel and touch of the body, its smell and material presence. Her gargantuan figures are freed from the conventions of feminine delicacy. They cascade across the canvas and into the viewer's physical space. The vast images of corpulent bodies are deliberately ambiguous as the paintings impose themselves on the viewer and surround the body that is looking at them. The viewer cannot escape the implications of their physical being.

Jenny Saville calls herself 'a scavenger of images,' she normally prefers to work from photographs rather than living models. In her studio she likes to be surrounded by images; her figures are usually composites of several bodies. It is interesting to note that Saville once worked in a plastic surgeon's office in New York and frequently visits a London medical museum as member of a pathology group. She shares with Francis Bacon a fascination for collecting pictures found in old medical journals of bruises, scars, gun shot wounds, pictures of deformities, and traces of disease which leave inscriptions on a body over time, like a memory, or a mark on a canvas." - from the publisher

9.9 x 13.5 inches