"Just one painting but it is one of the world's very greatest, and most dangerous. The shock of the old hits you in front of a naked Cupid who has clearly been portrayed from life, his raw, laughing features apparently coming straight from the mean streets into the gallery. This young love god is an anarchist, and Caravaggio paints like the antichrist, mocking civilisation, symbolised by the musical instruments at Cupid's feet."
"Giant wounded faces have haunted me since I saw this formidable, almost surgical examination of Saville's paintings. She emerges as the bloodstained, meaty successor to Freud and Bacon, a painter of modern flesh whose eye-popping variations of scale and searching human compassion make for a mighty artist. Yet Saville can be gentle as well as scary. Her intimate studies of motherhood and Degas-like pastels of lovers draw you in deeply."
A single Caravaggio painting presents a naked Cupid painted from life with raw, laughing features that suggest street reality and anarchic force. Musical instruments at the figure's feet symbolise civilisation under mockery, and love is rendered as destructive rather than conquering. Jenny Saville presents large, wounded faces and intimate studies that position her as a visceral successor to Freud and Bacon, combining surgical scrutiny with searching compassion and moments of gentleness. A Picasso exhibition staged as a proscenium-arch theatre plays with perspective, returning masterpieces to avant-garde origins and restoring their revolutionary visual power.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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