The most provocative – and political – of British painter Jenny Saville’s recent canvases remake traditional Christian pieta imagery in a way that both modernizes it and suggests timelessness. In this striking piece titled ‘Byzantium,’ Mary is replaced by a figure recalling an ancient Greek striding youth – a kouros – while her dead son’s reclining body is transparent, as if real flesh gave way to a Gray’s anatomy diagram. Elsewhere in the show, a male parent cradles a lifeless child with a modern war-ravaged city in the background. As the heads in both images overlap heads and feet reappear many times, Saville seems to suggest that history repeats itself with dire consequences. (On view at Gagosian Gallery’s 21st Street Chelsea location through July 20th).
