Reproduction Drawing I (after the Leonardo Cartoon) 2010

Jenny Saville made this drawing, Reproduction Drawing I, after the Leonardo Cartoon with charcoal. She gets right in there, smearing and layering to create this amazing image. What's really interesting to me is how the charcoal is used so directly. You can see the smudges and lines, almost like she's wrestling with the material to bring the figures to life. There's a real physicality to it. Look at the way she renders the mother's face, so tender, so weighty. Then, how she pulls charcoal down into tangled lines describing the children, whose faces are ghostly and blurred. It feels like a memory, or a dream. Saville's drawing reminds me of some of Francis Bacon’s portraits, how they distort and reshape the body to reveal something deeper about human experience. Ultimately, this piece reminds us that art is a conversation and that meaning is always shifting.