The Joy of Representational Painting - Draft 2

Mona Hatoum - Corps Étranger

"It is a complex work. It is both fascinating to follow the journey of the camera and quite disturbing. On one hand you have the body of a woman projected onto the floor. You can walk all over it. It’s debased, deconstructed, objectified. On the other hand it’s the fearsome body of the woman as constructed by society.

You enter a cylinder and you stand on the perimeter of the circular video image projected onto the floor. You feel like you are at the edge of an abyss that threatens to engulf you. It activates all sorts of fears and insecurities about the devouring womb, the vagina dentata, the castration complex."

More Jenny Saville

"It's because the nervousness of revealing is inherent that I'm interested in it - not in showing the world my genitalia. It is about being brave enough with myself to offer up that anxiety. I like my neuroses - they are my living sketchbook. I don't want to work them out."

The Joy of Representational Painting

Draft 1

Jenny Saville

"(Flesh) is all things. Ugly, beautiful, repulsive, compelling, anxious, neurotic, dead, alive."

Wikipedia - Oil Paint

"Oil paints have a surface translucency similar to human skin, making it an ideal medium for portraits."

Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar

"There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice--patched, retreaded and approved for the road."

Didier Anzieu, The Skin Ego: A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Self

"The primary function of the skin is as the sac which contains and retains inside it the goodness and fullness accumulating there through feeding, care, the bathing in words. Its second function is as the interface which marks the boundary with the outside and keeps that outside out; it is the barrier which protects against penetration by the aggression and greed emanating from others….Finally, the third function – which the skin shares with the mouth and which it performs at least as often – is as a site and a primary means of communicating with others, of establishing signifying relations…"

Hannah Wilke

"My mother understands why I’ve used myself nude in some of my artworks, possibly because she lived, when she was young, in an age where women were conditioned to be ashamed of themselves. As an adult, her introversion kept her safe. But I think she recognizes that the safety might have hurt her emotionally, even giving her illness and disease. And having been subjugated by that kind of pressure from society, I think she’s very proud of my thwarting that which has been taught by culture but which I think is inhumane."

Reborn in Blue