Jenny Saville – passage – 2004  

Theory: Feminism. 

Jenny Saville’s painting Passage depicts a modern portrait of a transsexual. It is a dramatic expression of a body that challenges traditional canons of beauty. It also considers the artificial construction of the human form. In an interview with Simon Schama, Jenny Saville said: 

“With the transvestite I was searching for a body that was between
genders. The idea of floating gender that is not fixed. The
transvestite I worked with has a natural penis and false silicone breasts.
Thirty or forty years ago this body couldn’t have existed and I was looking for
a kind of contemporary architecture of the body. I wanted to paint a
visual passage through gender – a sort of gender landscape.” 

Jenny Saville is known for beautifully large oil paintings that challenge societies structure of gender. Passage is an interesting contemporary piece that shows an agonizing frankness to the human body whilst also exploring a unique path that society so harshly judges, transvestites. The painting is an interesting exploration in to feminism, not only the equality of female’s bodies but everyone’s body. 

A lot of Saville’s work explores the disparity between the way women are perceived and the way that they feel about their bodies. Passage branches that out even further and makes the viewer feel the confidence of this transvestite. From the beautiful brushstrokes, to the rich cool toned pigments, Saville paints in such a mesmerizing realistic manner almost bringing her paintings to life. Passage explores the traditional romanticism aspect of female painting but with this unique contemporary matter of transgender, she has managed to normalise such a controversial topic in society in such a beautiful way.