Reproduction Drawing I (after the Leonardo Cartoon) 2010

This drawing by Jenny Saville, “Reproduction Drawing I (after the Leonardo Cartoon)”, really gets under my skin! I can almost smell the charcoal dust. The tonal range goes from a ghostly grey wash to these really sharp, almost violent dark marks. It's such a physical thing, drawing, and you can really feel Saville going for it, wiping things out and then re-finding them. I’m thinking about the source material being Leonardo's Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and John the Baptist. There's this whole lineage of artists looking at other artists, but Saville really drags it into the present. It’s not just an image of motherhood, it's raw, it’s messy, and it's absolutely full of looking, not unlike a painting. What does it mean to repeat, to reproduce, and to re-see?