Cool Stuff Goes Here: Discussion 3: Body and Soul

In week three we had a discussion entitled Body and Soul. The artists in this discussion dealt with issues of the body such as beauty, race, consumption, identity, and childhood. Of the artists in the discussion the two who really interested me were Yi Chen, and Jenny Saville.

Yi Chen dealt with the themes of identity and race in his portait paintings. To create his paintings, she first collages a composition from international fashion magazines (especially from China) into an amalgam of features. She then paints these collaged compositions onto a canvas as if it were a portrait, and this collaged monstrosity were sitting in front of him. Here is an example of Yi Chen's artwork.

Jenny Saville is a painter that essentially paints flesh as her subject. She deals with the theme of beauty in kind of a hamfisted way by using subjects that aren't traditionally beautiful. However, her execution is pretty much perfect. She is able to achieve life-like paintings of these subjects to the point of making the viewer uncomfortable to look at them.

I personally find myself drawing a lot of faces in my sketchbook. Sometimes I do self-portraits to pass the time, but other times I am just drawing from my head. Sometimes the faces come out looking a bit bizarre for whatever reason, sometimes they come out looking like my (which probably stems from the self-portraits) but either way I suppose it is my way of dealing with identity. I don't really think I could go much deeper than that because to me, they are simply drawings and doodles in my sketchbook that I can't particularly articulate a reason for. Here is an example of a self-portrait. This one is on the inside of the front cover in case I lose my sketchbook and someone is kind enough to return it. It also contains my contact info and such.