Deleuze- Francis Bacon painting- Couples and Triptychs- chapter 9
Between the abstract and the narrative is something else; the indechiperable moment.
For Bacon that moment is often the meeting of forces, forces which are occupied within two bodies. A dialogue which resonates is born. A tension is created. This is the coupling of sensations in Deleuze’s words. For that is what he think Bacon paints, the sensation as form, not the form.
The couples create a dilemma. What about the sense of violent isolation Bacons solitary, single figures have. That is no lost. The co prescence, the company of another, seems tospeak of seperation, and thus a heightened sense of isolation is born. An isolation through the connection absent in the combined prescence.
Duel sensations also take place int he single figures of Bacon. Different levels of experience seem to wrestle with each other within the lines and mess of paint. Form gives birth to form and form eats form. Within this descruction of the figurative illustration comes the discovery of the figure.
Whether within figures or between couples forces are at play. These force seek harmony, looking to find balance between them. But the balance is unstable, there is tension. This tension is the product of the harmony having been found from within a system not predisposed to balance. Thus the balance found is inevitably on edge, only just haivng emerged and capable of being just about to pull away. Tension in balance can only be found when it has emerged from an improbale disharmony. It has to be dug out; violently.
This violent discovery is often found from the wrestling of two opposing forces. It is what Deleuze calls a ‘combat of sensations.’ Resonance is the perfect word to use, as if only one frequency will result in this intense vibration. The balance must vibrate. It is like a blade piercing through a closed frame. It is trhe decomposition of movement, of form and its recomposition into an artifical construction which seems on the verge of collapse, but is still built.
Desire is a stage for such a confrontation, be it desire of the solitary figure or the coupled figures.
Such battles cannot take place within narrative. Within drama perhaps. But not within the more locigcal and linear world of narrative.
The attendant figures play an interesting role in such a conversation. Deleuze does not see them as observes or spectators. Instead he sees them as the norm, the constant via which the complexity of the central figure can resonate. The attendants are like silent walls which reveberate and eccentuate the dynamics of the lead part. They are like rhythm, a more solid beat agasint which the melody plays.
These rhythms set up hamonries. Active, passive and the rhythm of the attendant. LIght and dark, the pace and pause. Lines of beats running over and under each other, addind depth and complexity and instability to the overall balance. #This is loike a seen in a play, if we take Olivier Messiaen’s quote referenced in this chapter. The brutal act, the passive vistim who suffers and is dominated and lastly the present but inactive member. The last figure is the figure who creates a system by which the cause and effect of the scence can be measured. As a norm we then seen the brutality of own and the suffering of the other. It is the steady beat.
Rhythm is found and escapes and finds form when sensations are multipled, not singular. Isolated forms die and are silence. The multiplicity creates amplification. The multiplification is needed to chuck the forms up, to recompose them, to redistribute sensation into matter.
Bacon’s horror is hosued explicitally in this disturbance, in this vibration and resonance. The balance talks of an inevitable collapse.
Other posts:
Chapter Eight
Chapter Seven- hysteria
Chapter Six- painting and sensation
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter two- study of a dog 1952
