The representation of the nude in art history has always been an idealised one. The body has always been an obsession, and this idealised form has transferred to photographs that we see in the media. Saville’s work attempts to re-appropriate the female form through replacing the perfection of the old masters with a confrontational lived-in body (Borzello, 2012 p.8) in order to face concerns and confront the negative attitudes towards the nude body. Within this chapter there will be an analysis into how Saville explores to feminist values in …show more content…
Saville’s work in Plan see figure 6, the lines carved into the body evokes the concept of women trying to conform with the use of cosmetic surgery to a male define ideal of beauty. “In this mapping of the body as an area of problematic area a relationship is set up between perceptions of the natural and the planned. The question of who is exercising control over this 'plan' remains troubling and implicates the viewer of the image" (Phelan and Reckitt p.187). Theorist Kathy Davis has defended cosmetic surgery in her book Reshaping the female body: the dilemma of cosmetic surgery. Arguing that surgery could be seen as a “symptom of oppression and empowerment all in one” which from studying Saville’s work supports the argument. The geographical like contours that she has created cutting into the paint Saville reinforces the idea of the lines creating a new identity. Elizabeth Grosz, argues in Volatile bodies: Toward a corporeal feminism that that abjection links the “lived experience (and) the social and cultural specific meanings of the body”. She argues that abjection is a selective marking of the body and so an act of devaluing the body, specifically the female body. Saville has created lines into her body which generates the metaphor of a geographical landscape to explain the convex of flesh (Borzello, 2012, p.99) To reinforce the mass scale of the