“For both Bacon and Kafka the spinal colum is nothing but a sword beneath the skin, slipped into the body of an innocent sleeper by an executioner” 

Deleuze describes the seperation in Bacon’s figures of bone and flesh. The subbordinate nature of the skeletal structure and flesh coating in reality and the drawn linear structure and painterly covering in art is challenged.

Bacon’s figures are not boneless, but the bones seem to become malleable and to lose total control ove rthe figural exterior. The flesh becomes primary and the hierachy is inverted. Is the product of an individual who sees both the spiritual improtance of flesh and who favours the fluid nature of paint over the rigid contorl of line.

The relaitonship is no longer one of a cage in which the flesh is controleded and trapped but a stage upon which the flesh can perform. Deleuze describes these ‘acrobatics’ perfectly.

 Some of the most pertinant examples of Bacon’s approach are seen in his dealing with heads. He ‘dismantles’ the face in order to rediscover the head. The rubbing and brushing provide visual interuptions, creating ambiuguous areas of ‘indiscernability’. The face is no longer a portrait of an individual but a vessel to describe something more universal about man in general. The figure always seem to keep some attachment to the specific of the sitters identity, to ensure empathy and pity. Yet they are shifted far enough beyond to become a metaphor of makind in general. Bacon manages to combine the emotive power of dealing with specific individuals and sesnations with the broad impact of a universal message. This is no emotionally detached intellectual allegory. It is far more direct, piercing through us and channeling into our nervous system.

Particular feature of the face take on importance for Bacon. There are what Deleuze calls ‘eyes without sockets’ which he connects back to Rembrandt. This structural loosness creates a floating hole of depth and uncertainty.  

Most distrubing, but accurate, is his description of the scream in Bacon. He talks about the mouth as a vessel through whihc the entire body, the mass of flesh, can pass. The lack of an audible scream is replaced by a visceral ingestion and excreation of self as flesh. There is a gravitational pull of the form through this hole, as if it is the central force through which the action and emotion takes place.

the mouth and its importance- no longer an organ, a hole through which the entire body escapes, sense of pressure and itnensity. and which the flesh descends.the pity of the scream, not audible, but visceral, a scream as a physcial ingestion and vomit at the same time.