Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting
20 June – 7 September 2025
National Portrait Gallery, London
I was thinking about the way that faces come to us, like messengers from the elsewhere. As messengers they come and go, flickering in the light afforded by the day. They appear then as arrested light, as if bearers of this as a medium of becoming.
Each face that comes then, witness to traces of other faces, sometimes like a chain of gestures through decades, and even centuries past, but somehow not remote. This face, monumental in scale, is a soft monumentality, unlike the hard monumentality of the ancient Egyptians. So more like a flower rather than a mountain, and as such, a modulation of transience. Like a late arrival. A face that arrives deep.
Standing there, dwarfed but attentive, drawn in close. The surface ripples with ruptures of paint, or even to pun, the rapture of, like so many events pulling this way and that. A face as an event of presenting aliveness. Vibrant immediacy drawing in the breath contained in space. Colour electric absorbing now points, facing with this, a screen of temporal immediacy. Radiant immediacy, not stone like, but a pulsing blood-light like.
A face is a clearance of a passage, its own illumination. It is said that this is the most complex of all earthly surfaces, a veritable recording machine beyond self-possession and thus is an excess of itself. It is this excess that the artist paints. The face is the intersection between bone and spirit, it is the excess that shines.
Then there is the memory of faces in the deep recess of shadow. Rembrandt. Painting with the memory of Rembrandt. Creamy paint. All that feeling in paint. Transmutation. Flesh, memory, light, paint inscribed into the elsewhere of imagination. Then there is the possibility of a Van Gogh. Portraits passing through portraits, passing back into observation.
Why is the face attached to its own dignity? To paint a face is to go in search of such dignity. So, we are given over to a reiterative stance, faces facing the outside of their appearance, in place, but seeking the potential of the exteriority of this place. A veritable gestural theatre. Excess and dignity attempting to discover measure.
The painter invariably sees something that the other might not see, but in showing, awakens the other to what might have been passed over. The face of that delicacy of what comes before or comes after, like a perfume that arouses or lingers in the memory either side of the petals that open to visibility. The face of the visibility of what comes before or after, a now point stretched between memory and imagination which is the fold of subjectification.
What would know of the name of all of this? Orlando. Nothing much to be known, but much to be seen, if only a slither. A presentation, a drama of becoming, but not a being in place, a being made stable by naming in a step towards representation. Thus, a setting in motion rather than a setting before. The painter does not precede in straight lines towards an object of attention but rather through the opening of a channel of invention discovers the curvature in space that evades the deduction of an identity. The subject is thus named, but the gesture of doing so has found retreat into the density of depiction.
All of this brings us back to that moment of eruption. Just a face within a myriad of marks, mixing the exteriority afforded by these marks, within an event of semblance capable of keeping alive the gestures contained in both. Outside of place, but confident of being with, the name of the artist is part of simply passing through, like an etheric trace.
Drift, 2020-2022 by Jenny Saville, Private Collection Courtesy Gagosian © Jenny Saville,
我在想，面孔是怎麼來到我們面前的——它們好像來自另一個世界的使者那樣，在日光所賦予的光影中來來去去，閃爍浮現。它們的出現彷彿是一道被抓住的光，讓某種尚在生成中的存在得以顯現。
每一張出現的面孔都見證著其他面孔所留下的痕跡。有時像是一連串的手勢，穿越了數十年，甚至數個世紀，卻又絲毫不顯得遙遠。這張面孔雖然在尺度上宏大，卻是一種柔性的壯闊，不像古埃及的那種硬性紀念碑。它更像是一朵花，而非一座山，像是對轉瞬即逝的一種溫柔調和。宛如遲來者，這是一張帶著過往、記憶與重量的臉，一張觸及內心深處的臉。
站在這副「臉孔」面前，觀者顯得渺小又專注，被吸引著靠近。畫面表層因為顏料的斷裂而起伏震動——甚至可以雙關地說，是「狂喜」般的斷裂，如同無數事件正同時向不同方向撕扯。這張面孔是一場生命力的顯現，一種活生生的即時性，吸納著空間中封存的呼吸。色彩如電流般吞噬著此時此刻的所有感知焦點，面對著它，我們仿佛正凝視著一塊展現當下的即時屏幕。那是一種放射性的現在感，不似石頭般冷硬，而是如血光般溫熱跳動。
面孔是一個開啟的通道，一道自我照亮的界面。它被認為是地球上最複雜的表面，一部記錄萬象的機器，超越了自我的掌控，因此總是帶著超過自身的意義。藝術家所描繪的，正是這過度本身。面孔是骨與靈的交會，是那閃耀的過度之光。
藏在陰影深處的是一張張面孔的記憶。倫勃朗，是倫勃朗的記憶成為畫筆的引導。顏料如奶油般柔滑而厚重，所有情感都沉積其中。這是一次轉化–肉體、記憶、光與顏料，一起被銘刻進想像的他方。接著，是梵高式創作的可能性浮現。肖像穿越肖像，穿越視線與歷史，最後靜靜回到觀察之中，像是在觀看自己。
面孔為何總與尊嚴相連？描繪一張面孔，彷彿是一場尋找這份尊嚴的旅程。於是，我們被牽引進一種反覆觀看的姿態——面孔所面對的，早已不只是它們的外表，而是表象之外的深層之物，一種渴望被穿越、被讀取的存在感。它們雖然處在原位，卻不止於此。這是一場真正的姿態劇場——情感的過度與存在的尊嚴在畫面中彼此對抗、磨合，試圖在無法衡量之中尋找某種衡度。
畫家總能看見他人未曾察覺之物，而透過作品的呈現，觀者也被悄悄喚醒–重新看見那些原來被忽略的細節。面孔，是多麼極其微妙的存在，它遊走於「呈現之前」或「呈現之後」，如同香氣，在花瓣尚未綻放、又即將凋落之際，在記憶中游走，又或於其間縈繞。這副面孔不是被觀看的臉，而是一種「將現未現」的象徵。它象徵著一個被拉長的現在，一個介於記憶與想像之間的時刻——也正是在這樣的褶皺中，主體才得以生成。
誰又能知道這一切該有怎樣的名字呢？或許是「奧蘭多」吧。這裡無須知道太多，但卻有許多可以觀看，即使只是一道微光。這是一場展演，一場關於「成為」的戲劇，而不是某種被命名與安置的穩定存在。這是一次啟動，絕非擺放。畫家不是沿著筆直的路徑朝目標前進，而是在創造中打開一條通道，在其中發現空間的彎曲——那能逃逸身份歸類的閃光。即使主體被命名，但這個命名的動作也早已退回畫面的肌理之中，藏在顏料與描繪的密度裡，成為不可言說的所在。
所有這一切，最終又將我們帶回那個爆發的瞬間。一張面孔，在筆觸洪流中逐漸浮現，混合了這些痕跡所提供的可見性，生成一場「彷彿」的事件——一場仍在延續的生成，使畫家的手勢與面孔的姿態同時閃耀著未竟的生命。這面孔不屬於任何穩固的位置，卻真實地與我們共在；而藝術家的名字，也只是這場顯現過程中一縷輕盈的殘光，如乙太般的一道痕跡——掠過，卻不佔據。
Text by Jonathan Miles
Edited by Michelle Yu
