Looking at approaches to deformity, disability and obesity in Art

This essay will look at various artists and their approaches to deformity, disability and obesity in their own pieces of work. It will cover the meaning behind each piece, how the artist felt when they had created it and what they were thinking as they were creating it. This essay will be critical to several artists and their interpretation of the three disorders, whether it be through paintings, sculpture or another form, this essay will explore the different mediums and the different ways that they express their ideas. Artists that will be looked at in this essay are Mieke Teirlinck who painted ‘Francis’, Jenny Saville who painted ‘Host’ and John Issacs who sculpted ‘I Can’t Help the Way I Feel’. A few other artists will also be mentioned, due to the fact that their work also links in very well when discussing this topic. I have decided to look at the pieces named because I feel that they give a good demonstration of the disorders and can really help me focus on the point that I wish to make, which is the variety of ways that disorders can be portrayed in Art.

'Francis’ by Mieke Teirlinck was painted as part of the BP Portrait Award in the National Gallery of 2009. After training as a teacher she studied part time at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bruges. Her work has been exhibited throughout Belgium has been shown in both solo and group and was also commissioned to paint twenty-one portraits in 2002 for the organisers of the Bruges Cultural Capital of Europe. This painting is actually of Francis, a person who lives in a residential home for people with disability in Bruges. This was just one of a series of portraits of the people who live the residence and they had to sit for fifteen hours while she painted them. She said,

“I didn’t know any of them and connecting with them became the most interesting experience” .

Teirlinck has also painted many other people from the same place that look a bit like Francis and could possibly have the same condition as him, or another disorder.

The fact that the piece is created on such a small surface makes the piece a bit more interesting as it makes it more intense to the eye. It is very hard for the viewer to focus on anything else except the model due to the lack of space around him he cannot avoided and therefore seeing that something is wrong with him cannot be avoided either, which makes the viewer becoming a little more aware of his abnormality.

The colours that are used in the image are all very tonal and give a good sense if the fact that the piece is meant to be of a human due to all the different hues and textures that are created from the paint, and give the viewer a real sense that Teirlinck was painting from real life. It could make the viewer feel more connected with the piece and maybe more curious about it, wanting to know the history of it. The piece, in comparison to the rest of the exhibition it was in, was both similar and different. It was similar due the subject of the piece, as the exhibition was of celebrities and ordinary people that had been painted by a variety of different artists. The main difference, I noticed, was the quality of the piece in comparison to some of the others. Some of the pieces for example, ‘Maggie’ by Sue Rubira, was painted so clearly that they can easily be mistaken for a photograph instead of a painting. The quality of ‘Francis’ shows that many layers that have been put onto the canvas in order to build up the tone and the fleshy colours, like those which have been mentioned earlier.

‘Host’ by Jenny Saville was based on a novel by Marie Darrieussecq called Pig Tales. This is the story of a woman who finds herself slowing turning into a pig and Saville manages to paint the affective belly of the lady-swine, ripe and swollen for suckling. This was painted as oil on canvas, was 305 x 457cm and was created in 2000. This piece, similar to Teirlinck's work, also uses very tonal colours that also give of a very fleshy, skin-type look. When looking at the piece closely we can also pick out a few things that could be seen as abnormalities. Looking at the woman’s arms there are a few red blotches which could be interpreted as bruises or where some skin has been taken out her arm and blood has started to escape. A few other marks that appear across the body could also look like bruises, where she could have been attacked, or assaulted. This piece could have quite a big impact on the viewer as it is quite disturbing. Some of the mark making on the piece makes the skin looked like it is rolled over other pieces of skin and therefore showing that weight could be an issue to this ‘model’. When also looking closely at the image the viewer can see just how influenced this piece was by the book as the woman not only has the udders of the pig but also has no hands, but instead hooves.

“If Saville's feminism lies in a clear-eyed and unromantic view of the average female form - undistorted by sexual desire or notions of idealised femininity - it's hard to know whether her subjects (some clearly self-portraits) revel in their obesity, or are disgusted by it. They just exist, like standing stones of solid human flesh, or in the case of Host (2000), solid, dead, pig flesh.”

I also think that this piece also gives a big impact with its composition, because it comes of the page. The viewers do not see the head and the ‘hands’ and ‘feet’ are also cut off from the painting. Other than the udders on the woman, the only thing that the viewer can see is the hoof on one of the arms. I think instantly from first viewings of this painting viewers would be able to clearly see that Saville was trying to portray some form of animal, but only when doing some research do we find out the motives of the painting.

John Issacs ‘I can’t help the way I feel’ is in exhibition in the Wellcome Trust gallery and was created in 2003. It is made up of mixed media such as wax, resin, polystyrene and steel. It is big as well as it measures 86.5 x 59 x 70 inches which is the equivalent to 220 x 150 x 170cm. This piece of work has had many questions asked about what it actually is, whether it’s representing obesity on a extreme level or whether it’s a tumour that has completely overtaken the body. In a BBC article it is revealed that the work is in fact a “body of fat that is so gross it appears to have enveloped its own head” . To make this piece look even more realistic and disgusting it appears to have also been covered in sores in the entire crack underneath various layers of skin. Dr Ken Arnold said the image illustrated how obesity had become a medical issue, and was designed to show how an obese person might perceive themselves. These pieces of work relate very well to my topic because they all look at problems with people’s appearance and their health. The sculpture in particular can be interpreted into two different things. Obesity and tumors. Both of these topics have been in the media in some form or another, obesity in children is on the rise and tumors internally, for example cancer tumors can expand and spread across the body.

The biggest impact that this sculpture would have on viewers would be the height of the piece as it looks very life like and is human. Although it is covered in gloss, the skin tones, the growths and sores that are on the body all seem very realistic due to the colours that are used on it. The most disturbing part of this piece is the feet due to the colour. The redness/purple in them shows that something is wrong with them and potentially there could be a sense of cut off blood circulation. The fact that the growths are not perfectly rounded also demonstrates the realistic nature of the piece as the creases in the skin are all highlighted. This piece is also a bit worrying, due to the size of the legs, in my opinion. The size of the body compared to the size of the legs is disturbing as the legs are quite small. To imagine this as a real person is alarming because it would be fairly obvious that ‘person’ would not have a very long life.