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Gagosian Quarterly

April 13, 2018

jenny savilleon Willem de Kooning

In 2013, the exhibition Willem de Kooning: Ten Paintings, 1983–1985, organized in collaboration with The Willem de Kooning Foundation and curated by John Elderfield, explored the legendary artist’s late work. For the catalogue accompanying the presentation, Jenny Saville spoke on the gestures and elemental elegance of these paintings.

Willem de Kooning, Untitled XXIX, 1983, oil on canvas, 77 × 88 inches (195.6 × 223.5 cm)

Willem de Kooning, Untitled XXIX, 1983, oil on canvas, 77 × 88 inches (195.6 × 223.5 cm)

In response to questions prepared by Kara Vander Weg, September 2013

Kara Vander WegDo you remember when and how you first saw Willem de Kooning’s work? What was your first impression?

Jenny SavilleWhen I was growing up there was a reproduction of Woman I [1950–52] on my wall, but the first encounter I had with his work in the flesh was when I came to New York at the age of twenty. Easter Monday [1955–56] was hanging at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I remember it was so striking that it caused my head to literally jolt backward. It was an immediate and overwhelming feeling of recognition, a moment when I realized “this is something, this is really good.” It was as powerful and full of tension as works by the greatest old-master figurative painters in Europe, except it was abstract. It was just paint and human movement, but it was so much more of a painting in the flesh than I could have ever expected. The paint was right on the surface—it had dexterity, strength, and it felt urban. I knew that he was going to be important to my work. Picasso was very much a European figurative painter, Jackson Pollock was a quintessential American abstract painter, and de Kooning was this great bridge between the two. He represented a freedom of movement; he didn’t want to be tied down to a singular style or refuse the figure. So, instead of accepting a painting dogma, he spent his life saying, “Why not? Where will this lead me?” He followed his own logic.

KVWWhen did you first see the 1980s pictures? Has your appreciation for the work changed or grown since that time?

JSThere was a de Kooning show David Sylvester curated with Marla Prather in 1994–95 [Willem de Kooning: Paintings] that included some later works. But at that time I was so excited by his earlier work that I didn’t spend much time considering the late work. I was at a stage in painting when I wanted to put everything in—I didn’t realize how good it could be to take away, too.

The Gagosian show in Chelsea during spring 2004 [A Centennial Exhibition] was what turned me on to the later works. I was lucky enough to spend a few days in the gallery alone, before the show opened. I’d move back and forth between the gallery rooms and through the journeys he’d made in his life. The limited palette in the early- to mid-1980s was so liberating. It was like Japanese haiku poetry. Red, yellow, blue, white, and black are the bare essentials for painting. They’re the bases you can potentially mix everything from. Then he limited the colors again to the elemental colors of fire/blood and water/sky. I really like the freshness of the 1982–83 works, where he uses white paint and a scraper like it’s erasing in drawing. Through the scraper he can bleed the pigmented ribbons, cut them off, bury them under white, or almost erase them to a whisper. It’s the most satisfying sensation to paint fluid white paint into a stronger pigment or vice versa with a soft housepainter’s brush. He had the knowledge to get the consistency of paint just right so he could nudge the brush into the color and accent the tone. White paint becomes the carrier of space. He tries to give form to nothingness. Are you looking at form or space? Everything’s flowing and on the move. You can never quite fix your coordinates. It’s like he’s painting the offcuts or the space around Matisse’s cutouts. After 1983 he doesn’t seem to paint through forms so much, but around them, and the lines are the natural arc of his arm across the surface.

Jenny Saville on Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning, [no title], 1983, oil on canvas, 80 × 70 inches (203.2 × 177.8 cm)

The limited palette in the early- to mid-1980s was so liberating. It was like Japanese haiku poetry. Red, yellow, blue, white, and black are the bare essentials for painting.

Jenny Saville

KVWYou have talked about how your large work has been influenced by the grand scale of Venetian painting. Many of de Kooning’s paintings, especially the later works, are executed on a large scale—77 by 88 inches or 70 by 80 inches. Have these canvases impacted you in some way?

JSThe relationships between the grand scale of de Kooning’s gestures to the scale of his canvas and the human body have been influential.

KVWYour last exhibition of drawings and paintings [Jenny Saville: Continuum] featured a number of images that had multiple lines and perspectives, suggesting the movement of your sitters, but also perhaps the gestures of your making. Is the gesture that is so clearly visible in de Kooning’s work—although certainly less so than in the 1980s pieces—something that you think about in relation to your own?

JSIt’s the play of time and space through pigment and gesture that I’ve found so interesting. Through the movement of a mark you can travel to the innards of the painting or drawing and then follow the movement right back out. When you keep the paint wet and run other pigment through it, the gesture is forever frozen in a moment of becoming. It’s as though the paint is still live, even after it dries. I try to use these possibilities in the painting of figures, for example to get that feeling of delicate skin underneath the eye socket by running two or three tones wet into wet. By working like this and keeping the paint fluid, you create multiple nuanced tones that would be impossible to mix individually. The gesture and movement of painting actually creates those color tones. It’s exciting to work like that, because you work from the nature of the medium and the nature of yourself, in the moment.

De Kooning’s good at building space through contradiction. He often paints against the forms that he previously laid down in order to grow the space. I think this process he used for years shifts in the work of this show. He’s not creating by working against himself so much, and is instead playful with his language.

KVWYou have spoken about the “visual wrestling” in de Kooning’s earlier works, including Woman I, and how the pictures appear to be struggling to find form and space. Do you read these later canvases as more sedate and less angst-filled, or as more complex and layered?

JSThey feel like flesh in heaven. They make me think of W. B. Yeats’s poem “Sailing to Byzantium” and the line “Into the artifice of eternity.”

De Kooning described these later paintings as like bones—his ’70s paintings were all flesh without bones and the ’80s paintings were bones without flesh. It’s like he’s entered a kind of Shambala—the valleys or sensory pathways of an inner mind, outside of time and place. The way he paints is like stroking a cat all the way along its spine to the tip of its tail.

Jenny Saville on Willem de Kooning

Jenny Saville, Out of one, two (symposium), 2016, charcoal and pastel on canvas, 59 ⅞ × 88 ½ inches (152 × 225 cm)

KVWDe Kooning almost always incorporated drawings, both technically and conceptually, into his paintings. Do you think about his use of drawing in relation to your own?

JSI like to draw in paint, and when I’m drawing with a dry medium I seem to try to make the marks look like they’re fluid. Over the last few years my drawing and painting have become more interchangeable. I like the flatness and ability to build and erase that paper gives you. It’s so easy to start over on top, because the surface remains flat. When you look at all the Woman pastels de Kooning did in the early ’50s, you can see how vital they were to his paintings. To some degree, you can begin to preempt what the paint might do without clogging up a painting. I get a similar kick from putting energy into my mark making. De Kooning likes to move and swing a mark. When you take a thickish piece of charcoal and run it at a certain speed—run it toward you and push it away from you, it’s fluid and creamy and starts to behave like paint. Soft pastels are good too, as they can glide in a similar way.

KVWDe Kooning was known throughout his career as someone who had a masterful command of color, and you have remarked upon this in the past. While his tones in these later pictures are less “fleshy,” and there is less of a tactile quality to the paint, is his use of color in these later pictures meaningful for you?

JSHis colors in these paintings are like those described in ancient creation myths. In ancient Egypt, white was considered sacred due to its lack of color, and symbolized omnipotence and purity. The name of the holy city of Memphis means “white walls.” Red is the color of blood, fire, and life and blue represented the sea/sky and rebirth with the flood of the Nile Delta. The gods in ancient Egypt were even said to have hair made of lapis lazuli. So although the 1980s paintings seem incredibly modern and related to Mondrian or Miró’s simplicity, they’re also ancient and universal.

All artworks by Willem de Kooning © 2018 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Artwork by Jenny Saville © Jenny Saville; Courtesy Modern Forms; Photo by Mike Bruce. Interview with Jenny Saville © Jenny Saville. Text originally appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition Willem de Kooning: Ten Paintings, 1983–1985, Gagosian 980 Madison Avenue, New York, November 8–December 21, 2013.

Jenny Saville and Martin Gayford

In Conversation
Jenny Saville and Martin Gayford

Gagosian hosted a conversation between Jenny Saville and Martin Gayford, art critic and author, in conjunction with the exhibition Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London. Gayford also spoke with the artist about her works in the exhibition Jenny Saville: Latent at Gagosian, rue de Castiglione, Paris.

Image of Jenny Saville standing in front of her artworks

Jenny Saville: Latent

In this video, Jenny Saville describes the evolution of her practice inside her latest exhibition, Latent, at Gagosian, Paris. She addresses the genesis of the title and reflects on the anatomy of a painting.

Jenny Saville, Pietà I, 2019–21, charcoal and pastel on canvas

Jenny Saville: A cyclical rhythm of emergent forms

An exhibition curated by Sergio Risaliti, director of the Museo Novecento, Florence, pairs artworks by Jenny Saville with artists of the Italian Renaissance. On view across that city at the Museo Novecento, the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, the Museo degli Innocenti, and the Museo di Casa Buonarroti through February 20, 2022, the presentation features paintings and drawings by Saville from the 1990s through to work made especially for the occasion. Here, Risaliti reflects on the resonances and reverberations brought about by these pairings.

A Jenny Saville painting titled Self-Portrait (after Rembrandt), oil on paper

Jenny Saville: Painting the Self

Jenny Saville speaks with Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, about her latest self-portrait, her studio practice, and the historical painters to whom she continually returns.

Jenny Saville’s Prism (2020) on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly magazine.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2020

The Winter 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jenny Saville’s Prism (2020) on its cover.

Jenny Saville, Study for Pentimenti I, 2011, graphite and pastel on paper.

Shortlist
Five Preoccupations: Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville shares a selection of the books, films, and more that have been her companions in the quiet of the shutdowns in recent months and as she looks ahead to a new exhibition next year.

Jenny Saville in her studio.

In Conversation
Jenny Saville and Nicholas Cullinan

Jenny Saville speaks with Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, from her studio. They discuss portraiture, her latest work, and her art historical influences, as well as the shifting nature of perception in the age of digital communication.

Willem de Kooning seated at Sidney Janis Gallery, 1959. Color photograph

There is Woman in the Landscapes: Willem de Kooning from 1959 to 1963

Lauren Mahony considers a critical four-year period in the painter’s career, examining the technical changes that occurred between his “abstract parkway landscapes” of the late 1950s and the “pastoral landscapes” that succeeded them, as well as the impact on his work of his impending move to Springs, New York.

Left: Sally Mann, Self-Portrait, 1974; right: Jenny Saville in her studio, c. 1990s.

In Conversation
Sally Mann and Jenny Saville

The two artists discuss being drawn to difficult subjects, the effects of motherhood on their practice, embracing chance, and their shared adoration of Cy Twombly.

Still from video Visions of the Self: Jenny Saville on Rembrandt

Visions of the Self: Jenny Saville on Rembrandt

Jenny Saville reveals the process behind her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt’s masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles.

Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2019

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2019

The Spring 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Red Pot with Lute Player #2 by Jonas Wood on its cover.

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Book Corner
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Wyatt Allgeier discusses the 1984 Arion Press edition of John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, featuring prints by Richard Avedon, Alex Katz, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, and more.