Portraits so powerful they override reality – Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting review

National Portrait Gallery, LondonSaville’s colossal canvases are filled with bloodied mouths, epically thrusting nipples and meaty legs – and her tender Degas-like drawings are truly lovelyThe posters and grand title of Jenny Saville’s retrospective scream paint! – in red, pink and bruise colours – but you need to look at her exquisite drawings to get the measure of her. In Neck Study II a woman, eyes closed, holds up her head so we can study the curves and dips of flesh on her stretched neck. Saville notes these anatomical realities with a pencil in precise nuances of shading, also observing every contour of her face and the bones under her thin shoulders. It is beautiful. It is true.So what the hell – I thought – was she doing in the adjacent gallery where massively enlarged faces, pummelled by life and her art, are lit as harshly as flash photographs? They include her portrait of a boy with a bloodied beaten face, lip twisted, eyes dazed, used for the cover of a Manic Street Preachers album that was banned from supermarkets for being too disturbing. That was just a small reproduction. Here you are confronted by the colossal real thing, faces that truly get in your face. Continue reading...

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