Rupture (section)

At first glance this looks like a face, but the skin refuses to cooperate. Slashes of red, blue, and yellow run across the cheeks and brow, and thick smears of paint build up into rough ridges. This is a section of Rupture, painted in 2000 by Jenny Saville, a British artist who shot to fame in the 1990s as part of the group called the Young British Artists. She built her reputation on huge, unflinching paintings of bodies and faces, never softening them to make them easy on the eye.

Saville was drawn to flesh in all its messy honesty, the way it bruises, swells, and carries the evidence of a life lived. To get it right she pored over surgery and medical photographs, which explains why her work can feel unsettlingly real even when the brushwork turns loose and chaotic. Move in close and the strokes dissolve into pure smears of color. Pull back and a watchful, tired gaze takes shape. The painting suggests that a face is never a single simple thing, and that paint can hold beauty and damage in the very same breath.