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

Andy’s thoughts - and more thoughts

The sword swung down and embedded itself neatly into my thigh.  I did not scream for there was no pain, just the shock of the body against the cold steel, which caused the flesh to politely disect and part, revealing the way for a cute ribbon of the deepest red to unfurl and flow down my leg.  Rather than recoil, my purpose remained undimmed, I grabbed the hand that gripped the sword, so to keep the blade firmly inside me,  I wanted to embrace the sensation, to make it real, like some jilted lover who desparately clings to their adultrous other, holding them so close that they suffocate under the weight of their own infidelity.  Mad dog.  I breathed through bubbles of spit and searched the face of my enemy.  He was unremarkable except for the insanity of the moment that was caught within his eyes,  perhaps i was only seeing a reflection of myself, like you do when you stare intently enough into the eyes of another.  With my one free hand I pulled him close and sank my teeth deep into his throat, snorting as I did, his blood filled my mouth and poured forth from my nose.  Wheezing through his new hole, he lay catapleptic on the floor, waiting for the pitying pecks of the crows that circled above.  Only animals can be heroes, only animals can exist with cold hard fact.

The headless dog bites with a wretched, wanton fury 

It is unknowing, fathomless hunger.

The headless dog has a stare that tears flesh from bone. 

It was fogotten in time.

Good afternoon Mr. Whalecrow. Mr. Tom de Freston here

I have been adding more paint to ‘Him who wanted to have fallen II’ for a few days now. I thought it was alsmot finsihed before but needed something else. That something else has grown into multiple editions, each one seemingly taking it away from the end point. Not that I really know what that end point is or even really have any idea of the reason for each step i am taking. I am just blindly fumbling about in the dark.

 I think i am becoming over whelemed by the multiple facotrs which make up a painting, and in trying to balance each am creating a mess of a work. Ill add a dash of colour and it will work fantastically in terms of how it sits next to the colour adjascent to it. But then it shifts the mood of the work, unsettles the overall depth and causes a refocusing of our attention. I start to get the picture working in tone and then realise that perhaps it does not matter if the picture is the most tonally perfect image ever made when the motif and content to wqhich this formal qualitiy is applied is so vacuous and pretentious. Ill then have faith in the motif, seeing it as a strong and relevant synmbol but feel that the execution of the formal aspects of the work means that a potentially interesting message is being articulated by the equivalent of white noise. The next moment ill believe in the idea but feel that the composition is flawed, that the sense of space, the position of the main figures is limited and immature. Then suddenly compositionally things will come together but the idea seems like something not worth piecing otgether with this clarity.

It is obvious I am confused and frustrated.

 What becomes clear in times like these is that you are actually mindlessly grappling. I actually have very little genuine comprehension of what painitng, or more importantly my painting, is really about. What set of values underpin it and give it  a foundation to hold together. Even when we construct ideas to try give ourselves something to believe in we realise that we lack the requisite technical expertise and knowledge to build upon these. Either the house comes tumbling down becasue it has no internal structure or it collapses around the structure due to shoody brickwork. At this juncture I feel I lack both the necessary deisng of the architerct or the craft of the builder.

eyond these specifics concerns lie greater ones. What about if I realise how to design and build. This does not solve the problem of why, even if what and how are sorted. It is a building with no purpose, a tower to nowhere other than to reach up in some pursuit of empty egotistical goals. Its some vain attempt to display intellect, skill and talent without any real purpose. It all feels a little pointless at this moment in time.