A survey of British painter Jenny Saville is on view at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach until March 4. Included in the exhibit are 15 of the artist’s large-scale oil paintings and 15 of her drawings.

This is the artist’s first solo in a museum in the United States, though she did have a one-woman gallery exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery in 1999. Other than this, Saville’s only solo exhibitions have been in London and Italy.

Cheryl Brutvan, the Norton’s curator of contemporary art was able to identify and secure Saville’s work because of a generous grant provided by the Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund/MLDauray Arts Initiative. The grant funds a series referred to as “RAW: Recognition of Art by Women,” which will bring the work of six contemporary female artists’ work to the Norton over the course of the next six years.

It seems fitting that Jenny Saville was chosen as the first artist for RAW because “raw” is also an apt description of her work. Her paintings are large. Her subjects are people and her style is figurative. However, she doesn’t idealize them in a traditional way. Instead, she portrays a human form that is fleshy, obese, bruised, and disfigured. Yet, she evokes from these malformed figures inherent beauty. Her work has many layers of feminist nuance.

In Propped (1992) an obese woman sits precariously atop a stool that she’s evidently much too large for. Her nudity rebels against the “male gaze” and somehow there’s beauty in her repugnant fatness. The work demonstrates Saville’s natural talent as a painter. She was only 22 when she created this work. The subject’s stare is provocative. This type of stare is a repetitive theme throughout Saville’s oeuvre. Her color choices allude to Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, both of whom she counts amongst influencers.

Brutvan explained it this way: “She paints flesh and so she uses the tones that we find in the white body. She really looks at the color. I don’t think her work is idealized or romanticized at all. It’s very much reality. There’s a certain tone, but it’s full of color. You look at the fulcrum and it’s just an amazing passage to create that subtlety of the feeling of flesh.”

Saville is a young artist. She was born in 1970 in England, received her B.A. in fine art, with honors, from the Glasgow School of Art in 1992 and was discovered that same year by the iconic British art collector Charles Saatchi.

Saatchi commissioned her to create new work for a gallery show the following year and subsequently extended the commission for a period of three additional years.

“She’s an artist that became very well known very young — when she was still in her 20s. She had work exhibited publically and then a newspaper put her painting on the cover of their Sunday section,” Brutvan said. “Charles Saatchi saw that reproduction and pursued buying her work and then getting his hands on everything that was produced, even though it was her graduate show.”

As a result of her affiliation with Saatchi, her work was included in the notorious “Sensation” show of work from his collection, which travelled to the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, and also included work by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. At this point she met Larry Gagosian, who became her U.S. dealer.

Three subsequent life events shaped her future work. The first is that she received a residency in Connecticut that allowed her to study medical libraries and observe a local plastic surgeon. She embraced this opportunity because she saw it as a way to better understand human anatomy. She could now see behind the flesh, which already fascinated her. “The first face lift I saw was absolutely amazing because the doctor literally pulled the face off and then -- it was a deep-tissue one -- you could see how thick the flesh was,” Saville has said.

One wonders if Isis (2011), whose body seems marked into segments, awaits plastic surgery. She appears pathetically vulnerable, as though she’s looking to the viewer for approval, and this evokes sympathy. Soon, she’ll be cut through, like raw steak, in a quest for beauty. Apparently, the idea of flesh as an object apart from the person inhabiting it was compelling for Saville even as a child.

“Her mother remembers she was interested in, or didn’t mind the appearance of, liver that was being prepared to eat. She had openness to that kind of reality – to flesh and blood and doesn’t shy away from images that other people might find more difficult,” Brutvan said.

The second major life event to shape her work was her becoming a part-time resident of Palermo in Sicily. She bought a dilapidated 18^th-century palazzo and began to divide her time between there and London. Palermo had a profound effect on her. It’s a city of striking contrasts, where buildings decimated by war remain unaltered, yet subliminal natural beauty abounds.

One of the most engaging works in the exhibit is Rosetta (2005-2006), which she created in Palermo and is the portrait of a blind woman that Saville found beautiful. “Her eyes are like globes, planetary systems,” the painter said. Rosetta was emblematic of Italy’s gritty authenticity, which appealed to Saville.

“Things were more real and authentic than in a city like London. And that feeds into what she’s interested in with her own artistic process and subject, and what you learn by layers coming forward and how that informs the next move you’re going to make within a composition,” Brutvan said. “What she saw in Palermo was a manifestation of the ideas she already had as an artist.”

The other major life event that influenced her recent work is that she became a mother. In 2007, she gave birth to a son, and the following year a daughter. Shortly after this, in 2009, she began a series of charcoal drawings that are based on Leonardo da Vinci’s work, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, which is found in London’s National Gallery.

Her depictions of motherhood, as with all her work, are not entirely idealized. At times, the figures seem strained and awkward — yet the women’s faces do possess a marked serenity. Her skill as a draftsman shines through in these drawings where her raw talent is most visible.

There’s a tinge of irony to the Jenny Saville exhibition — with its provocative, feminist underpinnings — that’s noteworthy. Mounted in a plastic-surgery-and-appearance-obsessed locale like Palm Beach, probably one of the most image-conscious areas in the country, the exhibit will surely draw the ‘ladies who lunch” crowd.

Momentarily imagining these types of women strolling through the show after lunching at the Norton’s café, makes one want to be a fly on the wall to overhear their comments — and adds another layer of nuance to this thought-provoking show.

Jenifer Mangione Vogt is a marketing communications professional and resident of Boca Raton. She studied art history and received her B.A. from Purchase College. Visit her blog at www.fineartnotebook.com

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Jenny Saville is on view at the Norton Museum of Art until March 4. Hours for this exhibition are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., Thursdays from 10 a.m. until 9 p.m., and Sunday from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults, $5 for visitors aged 2 through 13, and free for children under 13. Palm Beach County residents receive free museum admission on the first Saturday of each month. For more information call 832-5196, or visit www.norton.org.

Theater: The theater event of the weekend is the debut of Parade Productions, a new company led by artistic director Kim St. Leon, which kicks off with Donald Margulies’ semi-autobiographical play Brooklyn Boy, at the Studio at Mizner Park, a flexible configuration playhouse on the site of the former International Museum of Cartoon Art. Jewish identity is often at the heart of Margulies’ work, and never more so than in the tale of Eric Weiss (played by area favorite Avi Hoffman), a struggling novelist trying to escape his roots, but who stumbles onto mainstream, best-selling success with a book about growing up Jewish in that flavorful New York borough. And just as he achieves public acclaim, his private life is crumbling into crisis. Serious stuff, but Margulies handles it with skill and not a little humor. Continuing through Feb. 12. Tickets are $30, available at www.paradeproductions.org.

Film: Ever since she starred off-Broadway in a singular play called The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs some 30 years ago, Glenn Close has been trying to get a film adaptation of it made. Not only has she succeeded at that -- no little feat -- but her performance in the title role has just earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Yes, Close plays Albert, an invention of her character’s, a woman in 19^th-century Dublin at a time when job opportunities were few for women, and they certainly were not allowed to wait tables in the nicer hotels. So she disguises herself, and perhaps succeeds all too well at her gender and identity change, which becomes something of a trap for her. Close is terrific as this repressed little man, but the film is stolen out from under her by Janet McTeer -- also Oscar-nominated -- playing a house painter with his own similar secret. Opening today at several locations, including the Living Room Theaters in Boca Raton.

Dance: Liam Scarlett is the coming man in British dance, and he’s done a new work for the Miami City Ballet called Viscera. Set to the First Piano Concerto of the American composer Lowell Liebermann, the company describes it as passionate and “gut-wrenching.” Also on the program are In the Night, a Jerome Robbins ballet set to music by Chopin, and George Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial, a sumptuous evocation of Tchaikovsky. 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 1 p.m. Sunday at the Kravis Center. Tickets start at $19. Call 877-929-7010 (MCB), the Kravis Center at 832-7469 or visit www.miamicityballet.org.

Music: One of the most important pieces of contemporary classical music in the last quarter of the last century was surely the Symphony No. 1 of John Corigliano, a 1989 paean to the friends the composer lost and was losing to the AIDS crisis. Although AIDS itself has become more manageable with contemporary drug protocols, the symphony remains a searing document, and an effective one whatever the program. It’s also very difficult to play, and the students of the Lynn Philharmonia will have a real challenge ahead of them when Albert-George Schram leads them in the symphony Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at the Wold Center for the Performing Arts. Also on the program is John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine and the golden-hued Clarinet Concerto of Mozart (in A, K. 622), played by the veteran Jon Manasse. 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday; tickets: $35-$50. Call 237-9000 or visit www.lynn.edu/tickets.

Outside the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach’s Old School Square, Cara Nusinov posed for a photograph by the sculpture she designed to pay homage to poetry.

“Art makes poetry touchable,” she said as she stood by the Polka Dot Poetry Peacock, which she created for an art-in-public-spaces project in Coconut Grove. “I imagine people enjoying the poems affixed to the peacock and telling others, or going to the library and checking out books by the poets.”

Nusinov’s comments were very much in the spirit of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, which closed its eighth annual season Jan. 21 after a week of readings and workshops that attracts some of the biggest names in poetry, and its most ardent students.

This year’s special guest was Charles Wright, a renowned American poet who teaches at the University of Virginia. This year’s faculty included Kim Addonizio, Cornelius Eady, Claudia Emerson, David Kirby, Thomas Lux, Gregory Orr, Chase Twichell and Eleanor Wilner.

The festival was founded by Miles Coon, Delray Beach poet, snowbird and retired businessman.

“Poetry is a method of survival. There's something about the rhythm and concentration of language that's profoundly human,” said Coon, who came to poetry late in life. “We turn to poetry at weddings, at funerals, at times of disorder, and that's because death and love are the driving engines of most poetry."

Lux, Coon’s former professor in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, has attended dozens of poetry festivals in his professional lifetime and the Palm Beach Festival since its inception.

“Miles has created the classiest and the best poetry festival in the country. What’s rare is that the primary focus of the festival is teaching,” Lux said. “In one week’s time, we do the equivalent of a half-semester’s worth of graduate work.”

Lux then quoted American poet Stanley Kunitz’s poem, The Layers: “Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered.”

“This event gives the tribe a chance to meet again,” says Lux.

On Saturday, the Crest Theatre auditorium was at capacity for a 2 p.m. panel discussion with the eight members of the faculty. Poets and would-be poets of every size, shape, color and age milled around discussing the art form.

They were also anticipating the evening’s lineup – a coffee house, party and performance poetry event featuring New York poet Vanessa Hidary (the Hebrew Mamacita) and Jamaal May, a two-time individual World Poetry Slam finalist.

The afternoon panel gave each poet the opportunity to choose one of his or her favorite poems to read. A discussion over whether form is restrictive or can open you up to creativity gave rise to a spontaneous discussion on ikebana, Japanese flower arranging.

Ikebana is a creative expression, but governed by strict rules. There are three elements to ikebana (heaven, earth, man), so Lux jokingly declared: “There are three elements to making a good poem – only we don’t know what they are.”

Rosella Stern, 70, of Ormond Beach, is a Yeats scholar and retired professor. She lost her poetry partner of 40 years in a tragic accident, and became motivated to write and publish a book of poetry in her honor.

A friend in California heard about the festival and called Stern. “You must go,” she ordered, and go Stern did.

She writes poetry that she calls rants. Her latest rant is titled Yanqui Pig Dog Poem (A Rant for the 99ers) in which the last line of the poem is “take off your suit and bark.”

“The festival is a rich and meaningful experience for me. It was sometimes scary, but I am grateful to have the space and privilege to pursue what I love and get support at the same time,” Stern said.

Kurt Brown, a retired professor, founder of the Aspen Writers’ Conference and the husband of poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar, has written six books of poetry.

“As someone who used to run writer’s conferences, I know a good one when I see it,” says Brown, who has served as the festival’s marketing director. “It starts at the top. Miles creates a community feeling whereby people feel safe to share their work without fear of criticism.”

“I always say, there’s no reason a conference like this should work: You fly a long distance to get here, you pay a lot of money for hotels, you bring your innermost thoughts to be criticized by total strangers, but somehow it all works.”

And there are other good reasons for that, Brown added.

“And besides all that, I like to soak up the sun and have some Key lime pie.”

Like Snakes on a Plane, Man on a Ledge is a bluntly up-front title: a subject and a predicate, reducing the picture to the essence of its poster art. I’m all for enigmatic titles, but this approach has its allure. Why are there snakes on a plane? And why is that man on that ledge?

In Asger Leth’s debut feature, the man is Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington), a former cop, apparent jewel thief and escaped convict who spends most of the picture perched on the ledge of a Manhattan skyscraper hotel in a state of knee-buckling precariousness. (The rest of this paragraph may contain some spoilers). But he has no intention of jumping, we soon learn. While the media and increasing hordes of bloodthirsty pedestrians watch from below, his pseudo-suicidal stunt is just a diversion for his real plan: to clear his name and prove that he didn’t steal a precious diamond by exposing the industry captain who framed him. To this end, he has sent his brother and brother’s girlfriend to penetrate the bowels of a neighboring edifice and uncover the fraud.

Nick’s other ally is Lydia Mercer (a well-cast Elizabeth Banks), a police psychologist and an “outsider” on the force who is still licking her wounds after her previous man-on-a-ledge ended up taking the plunge. She’s joined in Cassidy’s hotel room by Jack Dougherty, played by Edward Burns with the actor’s trademarked blend of bland smugness.

The film’s strongest casting is that of Ed Harris as David Englander, the film’s real estate-tycoon arch-villain. With his slicked-back remnants of hair and three-piece suits oozing malfeasance, he plays the part with memorably melodramatic menace, so unctuous his character must bathe in Pennzoil.

So these are the cards in place, twisting and turning before toppling toward a climax. Many of these twists are ludicrous, hilariously implausible even considering its disbelief-suspending parameters. As long as it feels right, the movie runs with it, logic be damned.

That said, Man on a Ledge is a better-than-average action thriller, especially in the dump month of January. It moves well, and it will please moviegoers looking for Die Hard-like escapism.

Worthington is no Bruce Willis in his prime, but the elements are similar: confined building, flustered/helpful cops, sarcastic humor, soulless bad guy. The movie is especially effective if you fear heights, as I do – my knees went weak every time Leth’s camera swooped around its immobile antihero, reminding us that one errant sneeze could send him falling.

Though it’s ancillary to the action, screenwriter Pablo F. Fenjves can’t help but insert some well-timed social commentary. When Nick wants to create a bigger distraction, he takes out a wad of bills and sends them fluttering to the street, where, naturally, civilized men and women push through police barricades and act like pigs at a trough. The obviously Caucasian-American Kyra Sedgwick is cast as shameless newscaster “Suzie Morales,” transforming into a Latina only when broadcasting her name for the camera.

And, most important, there are numerous references to the stock market crash and the Great Recession, with Ed Harris’s Englander embodying the “1 percent” that caused it. This film was surely written prior to the formation of the Occupy movement, but it’s obvious where its sympathies lie.

MAN ON A LEDGE. Director: Asger Leth; Cast: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks, Ed Harris, Jamie Bell, Kyra Sedgwick, Genesis Rodriguez, Edward Burns; Distributor: Summit; Rating: PG-13; Opens: Friday at most theaters

OK, Academy Awards presenters, start practicing pronouncing the name Michel Hazanavicius.

Who says there are no surprises anymore in the movie industry? If anyone had predicted a year ago that a black-and-white, virtually silent film without name stars would be released in 2011, earn 10 Oscar nominations including best picture and be the favorite to win, that person would be shuttled off to a padded cell.

But that is exactly what has happened for The Artist, the Cinderella story of the year, a romantic comedy set in the days of Hollywood as silent films are giving way -- making and ruining careers -- to talkies.

At this morning’s nominations announcement, The Artist walked off with nominations for performers Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo (inexplicably relegated to the supporting actress category), two for director/screenwriter Hazanavicius, plus mentions for art direction, cinematography, costume design, film editing and music. If it only had more sound, it would surely have run the table with nods for sound editing and sound mixing.

By the time of this morning’s announcements, of course, The Artist was already the front-runner, having picked up best picture wins from the Golden Globes and the Producers Guild. Now the public has to discover the film because, since it was released in the United States in November, it has only grossed a paltry $9.2 million domestically.

The film’s presumed closest rival is Alexander Payne’s Hawaiian dramedy The Descendants, nominated for best picture, Payne’s direction and co-written adapted screenplay and best actor George Clooney. But in one of the day’s most glaring snubs, supporting actress Shailene Woodley came up empty-handed. Still, if an anti-French campaign emerges against The Artist -- or even a backlash against its overbearing producer, Harvey Weinstein -- the top Oscar could go to The Descendants, which also won a best picture Golden Globe (for drama).

This is the year the Academy changed the rules about the number of best picture nominees, requiring a film to get 5 percent of the first place votes to make the cut. As a result, there could be between five and ten movies in the field and when the dust settled the category had nine entries. Also included are The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life and War Horse. Probably the ninth nominee in terms of vote totals is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the quirky 9-11 aftermath film that I like a lot, but has been receiving brutally negative reviews. (See it.)

Much talked about for a best picture slot was Bridesmaids, the girls-can-be-vulgar-too comedy which had to settle for a supporting actress nod for Melissa McCarthy and an original screenplay nomination for her co-star Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo.

If I ruled the Oscars, the best picture nominees would have also included Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and the cancer comedy, 50/50. But I don’t.

No surprises for best actress, which looks like a two-horse race between Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) and Viola Davis (The Help). Poor Meryl has only won twice, and her most recent victory was 20 years ago, probably because she is expected to be brilliant every time out. The other three nominees -- Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs), Rooney Mara (Dragon Tattoo) and Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn) -- have to be considered long shots.

The best actor field is more competitive, led by Hollywood golden boys George Clooney (The Descendants) and Brad Pitt (Moneyball), even though Pitt was more impressive in the less audience-friendly The Tree of Life. Also in the running are Dujardin, Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and Demian Bichir (A Better Life). Bichir is the surprise, though an admirable choice in a little-seen picture. He takes the place of such more expected nominees as Michael Fassbinder (Shame), Leonardo DiCaprio (J. Edgar) and, my choice, Michael Shannon (Take Shelter).

Nominated actors in their 80s tend to be sentimental favorites, but this year the supporting actor category has two of them. Christopher Plummer (Beginners) and Max von Sydow (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), both 82, will be vying for their first Oscar. Hoping to stop them will be Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn), Jonah Hill (Moneyball) and Nick Nolte (Warrior), but put your money on one of the octogenarians.

The supporting actress field is mostly Oscar rookies, with only Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs) a returning nominee. If there is an Artist sweep, the award could go to Bejo. Otherwise it is wide open, with Bridesmaids’ McCarthy and two actresses from The Help (Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer) potentially cancelling each other out.

With nine best picture nominees and only five for best director, the only surprises are snubs. In the category are Hazanavicius and Payne, as well as Martin Scorsese (Hugo), comeback kid Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris) and Terence Malick (The Tree of Life). The most prominent snubbee is surely Steven Spielberg, whose War Horse was noted for art direction, cinematography and music.

Perhaps more puzzling is the failure of Spielberg’s other 2011 picture, The Adventures of Tintin, to gain a nomination for animated feature. They went instead to Rango, Puss in Boots and Kung Fu Panda 2, as well as two foreign-made films, A Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita. Not surprising in its absence is the Pixar dud Cars 2, though this is one of the few time since the category was created that the studio is not in the running.

The 84^th Academy Awards will be telecast Sunday, Feb. 26, with popular veteran emcee Billy Crystal returning to the assignment after many years away.