In a room of mother works, in charcoal and pastel as well as paint, Saville becomes interested in women’s bodies transforming dramatically in motherhood, where the bellies and boobs and thighs are crawled over – again the fleshscapes – by babies with their thick chubby thighs and fingers. Any parent, but most especially mums, will testify that those early months is mostly having your body existing as a massive playpark for your baby, who wants to pinch, cuddle, suck, grab and if you’re unlucky, bite, any bit that comes close. Mother’s bodies are their early worlds. In The Mothers, the cherubs of Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin – which Saville saw as a young artist in Venice – are brought down to earth. And they’re not being easy to deal with either. I loved the way she captured the movement of little kiddies, these children are not serene, sweet little thing, they are arching their back to escape a grip, wriggling around annoyingly, screaming blue. This is the reality of human life, bodies piling up, interlocking, shoving, trying to go back in. These mums are totems of fertility, not anti-feminist, just bare-naked reality about the wonderful crap you have to deal with.
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