Influences for series

This is so hard.  I could not pick one person who inflences my series.  For me I think the research itself has been an inspiring exploration. I think Jenny Saville influences me for the fleshiness of her work. The voyeristic qualities of her fascination with her models. Both fleshy beautiful and grotesque. The work being suggestive unabashed and unashamed. The more I focus on my subjects I think the flesh is becoming my biggest challenge and fascination.

I think Anna Gaskell influences me for her almost spied on young ladies.  Especially in the series called hide where she is using her photography to talk about the Brothers Grimm story of the Magic Donkey, where the dad was so obsessed with his wife that when she dies and his daughter becomes pubescent and starts to look like her he starts seeking after her in a lustful way and to escape she dons the skin or hide of a donkey and sneaks around.  The idea of being sexualized when you aren't trying to be.

 Vanessa Beecroft  I also find influential from her performances of the many models.  I am confused about the artists intent through these works.  I have read several articles everything from her obsession with her bulimia to her idealism of the physically fit.  I find all of this fascinating because these articles are all found in a collection of articles written about her work on her artist page.  http://www.vanessabeecroft.com/frameset.html
 How I view the work though as being about the many depravities of the obsession we as a social culture have with the model and all the unbecoming and unaware ways in which we stare and obsess about these models as well as the models seeming to have no opinion of the audiences gaze.  The aloof nature of it all and the objectification of a woman in this bare and vulnerable state. Even though these settings are so glamorized as being high fashion at the same time as flawed in their incredible made up sort of way.  Like how sometimes I think I look both so beautiful and completely gross with make up on.

And looking at Beecroft's work, I found Marlene Dumas and loved some of the sexual nature and perverse quality or as she states it in a video when the interviewer asks if it is the male gaze she is thinking about and she says she is not so worried about that as that..."I think that just the act of looking you make an object of  anyone, anyway" I think this quote is just so brilliant and touches of exactly what I am exploring in my series works as well.  I really enjoy this interview!

  http://www.marlenedumas.nl/marlene-dumas-polymorphously-perverse-every-way/