Deleuze expresses those elements of Bacon which I knew but could not articulate and then of adding in layers of interpretation which had previously been closed to me.
In chapter one of his seminal text he accurately asserts how Bacon composes the painting as ‘a kind of amphitheatre os place’. A stage which is used to to ‘isolate the figure’.
He goes on to talk about Bacon’s search for something beyond illustration and narration. Beyond the showing of what is seen or the telling of a story. Bacon searches for something uniquely painterly in his figuration, rather than competing with phtoography or literature. It is his isolation of the figure which Deleuze recognises Bacon’s ability to find this seperation of image from these two explicit functions. No longer merely a part of the whole but an object in its own right which we have to engage with directly. Deleuze articulates this perfectly, and then some.
‘Narration is the correlate of illustration. A story always slips into, or tends to slip into, the space between two figures in order to animate the illustrated whole. Isolation is thus the simplest means, necessary but not sufficient, to break with representation, to disrupt narration, to escape illustration, to liberate the Figure: to stick to the fact’
In my head an analogy seems to come to mind with music. This is no longer the note or the actor which is merely there to serve the composition or the script. This is the note nad actor on its own, paused and extended into a monologue of intense experience for the viewer.
Storyless we are left to deal with the thing in itself. It is an intensity and a focus which is capable of peeling back our skin and tapping directly into our system. It is painting on its own terms without the need for pure abstraction.
Bacon’s 1952 ‘Study of a dog’ is a work which does all of the above. Here Bacon readdresses a recurring specific motif in his work. The dog sits within a staged space. Twisting within itself with no other figures for its actions to relate too. It heroically spins and shakes in front of the small street scene in the backgroun. Seperated by the broad red stage it forces attention to remain on its form. The dark green cricle in which is performs seems to see it reach within itself.
Its disturbing and restless. It gives us no break, no justification, no point of departure. We are kept at this viscious moment without release untill our greedy eyes seek a pause outside the canvas. It leaps beyond the limits of dry, formal or narrative analysis. It penetrates to a place deeper, more human and more disturbing.
