1976 Oil on canvas 26.5 x 40 cm
Influential Artists: Part ii
Philippe Pasqua
Pasqua has an attraction towards what is most vulnerable – bodies and faces, sometimes with stigmatising differences that he adopts and magnifies through his paintings. Pasqua is the type artist that is renewing the art of the portrait... Pasqua’s painting strikes the viewer like an almost physical impact, but also like a vision that is at the same time explosive and incisive. The bold use of colour and conscious decision to keep the tones dark impacts the reaction to the art and leaves us with questions about the subject as we are so infatuated with the story Pasqua creates with the painting.
Lucian Freud
Freud’s brushstrokes become increasingly forceful, and the volume of paint on the canvas increases, so that it seems to almost shape the contours of skin or hair . In the portrait of the artist Frank Auerbach, his powerful forehead dominates the canvas. Freud uses a lot of neutral tones in his portraits to capture the realism of the flesh and clearly shows the shadows and highlights of the face well. I really like the way Freud applies paint, it’s thick which allows people to see the shape and structure of the matter’s face.
Jenny Saville
There is a special quality to Saville’s style, the studies look clean despite what they are of and they have a degree of realism to them shown through certain features like the eyes and nose. The extra white paint in particular places highlights features and brings the painting to life as shown in the girls eyes. The way she applies paint is what I like most, it’s expressive, patchy, raw and mirrors her subject matter of representing quite disturbing, real, topics that people face in modern society.