Ruben's Flap 1999

Jenny Saville's monumental painting, "Ruben's Flap," is a tour de force in oil paint, a medium laden with art history. Saville approaches the fleshiness of her subjects with palpable materiality. Thick impasto creates a topography of the body, each brushstroke a deliberate mark of construction. Notice how the paint is both representational and abstract, simultaneously depicting skin and asserting its own physical presence. The scale is crucial here. Saville's decision to render the figures larger than life amplifies their presence, forcing a confrontation with the viewer. The labor involved in such a massive work is considerable, each layer of paint meticulously applied and blended. In doing so, Saville engages with the tradition of figurative painting while subverting conventional ideals of beauty and representation. Saville invites us to reconsider the relationship between the artist's hand, the material of paint, and the societal gaze, ultimately challenging the high/low art divide.