Francis Bacon- Deleuze chapter 7, Hysteria.
Its ‘hysteria’. It’s a ‘galloping schizophrenia’. This, according to Deleuze, is a unique property of painting, particuarly Bacon’s painting. What exactly does he mean by this?
He talks of the ‘body without organs’, which sounds wonderfully greusome but is more than a mere lump of blood drenched skin withered on the floor. To understand the body without organs we need to appreciate what is meant by the body with organs.
It seems the Deleuze sees the individual as one which is trapped by the limits of its forms, or at the least our vision of the body is trapped. The organs are specific forms in specific places, there predetermined organisation is the organism. The organism is our system, it defines, limits and controls our physical prescence. Deleuze beleives we are more than this. Thus the painters job is to reach beyond a mere description of the container and its compartmentalised existence.
For Deleuze we do not just paint the visable prescence but make visable the entire prescence, including sensation which reaches beyond these previously described limits. For him painting has this ability. The colour which breaks from naturalism, the line which needlessly reaches further, the mark which abstracts; all these are factors which begin to offer avenues of escape. For him the body can be realsied by painting from the physcial constraints of concrete, measurable values. Painting is more elastic than tangible reality. The sensation searched for cannot be so empirically measured or recorded. For Deleuze painting shoudl reach further. Beyond the limits of the flesh and towards a more direct root to the nervous system.
This is not a case of reaching for abstraction. For that journey sees us go to far, to the point where we have become subordinate to a new limiting vision. We are back to being restricted by the body and the organism, but this time the organism is one of painting not a human prescence. It is limiting all the same. Abstraction is not a total escape but a new entrapment. It is merely another submission.
There is no point looking for the point of total escape, for painting cannot find it. The expression of pure sensation is a gift saved for music. Painting is always locked to the body and when it breaks total free it is merely locked to another body.
What is unique about painting is the frustration. It is always locked to an organism but never totally comfortable in its system nor capable of being set toally free. Rather than lament this limbo painting needs to attempt to articulate the desire, but preordanied failure, to escape. What painting talks of is that failed desire to be set free, the moment of flux, the point at which we reach for sensation but remain attached to flesh. We remain locked at the point of escape, rooted to the material reliaty whilst looking to break beyon dit. Painting is, as such, intrinsically tragic.
This tragedy is what I think Deleuze is talking about when he uses the word hysteria in regards to Francis Bacon’s work. However inescapable it is we still attempt to break from it. The desire for a point of inevitable failure is surely a resonating frustration which can be lablled as hysteria.
Other entries:
Chapter Eight
Chapter Six- painting and sensation
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter two- study of a dog 1952
That was excellent mate, i think the best you’ve written. superb. it was one concept in the book which i was really struggling with, and you’ve helped me to understand it.
The difference between music and painting i found particularly enlightening. he isn’t saying that painting is second best because it can’t reach pure sensation, but that this tension or “hysteria” is an essential ingredient in paintings own particular success.
I think an interesting point to raise here is that during this period in the mid 20th century, some of the greatest figurative paintings ever came from britain (and yes i’m aware of the complexity of that statement, with lucien freud, frank auerbach, etc in the list who weren’t from britain but came here at a young age), it appears to me that it was at this stage where the london painters really got to grips with their own sense of awkwardness and that the british sensibility was perhaps particularly suited to this realisation of the futility of capturing sensation in figuration, when the rest of the world was reaching for abstraction. it is certainly true that these paintings couldn’t have been created anywhere else.
What i’m interested in is whether you think this type of painting can be produced now, because i think i’d question whether it can. the honesty which bacon was striving for seems naive now, even tho you look at his works and they really do do all they say on the tin, still. the production of them is insincere if we attempt to do them today.
Andy
15 Jul 08 at 8:51 pm
Cheers lad.
Will have some thoughts about out relative aims in a contemporary context soon. Will perhaps try to unearth them through a discussion of a few contemporary painters.
Aiming to try get my head sorted by end of September, to work out what I have done over the last tweleve months and what I have planned. Need to get some clarity as to what exactly it is I am trying to do with my work. Think some blogs on other painters for a while will help me with this.
For now I am going to carry on trudging out some thoughts on each chapter of ‘the logic of sensation.’
Tom
16 Jul 08 at 9:01 am
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