This is an article I wrote for ‘varsity’, Cambridge Universities independant student paper. http://www.varsity.co.uk/archive/677.pdf
Vomiting, screaming, sexual spasms, paralytic disembowelment, disappearing through the anus and exploding as if cut open from within. Welcome to the theatre of Francis Bacon.
Bacon stages the performances through the use of space, creating clear geometric or circular arenas to house the drama. Space takes on a psychological role with Bacon. It is always instable, full of tension and on the verge of collapse. It resonates with the wider condition of the central characters.
One of Bacon’s great characters is the central figure in his 1965 ‘Crucifixion’. His trademark intense orange pulls us in. It becomes one of many devises which ensure he reaches beyond illustration, tapping directly and violently into our nervous system.
The central figure appears in each canvas, squirming, falling and imploding. The vomit themselves out through a hole and are pulled in through an internal gravity. The forces are described by scrubbing and splattering, what Deleuze called areas of indiscernibly.
The new decompositions of movement are a result of a fascination with the photographs of Muybridge. Bacon translates his borrowings into acrobvatic figures with elastic bones. A spine becomes a sword which opens up the form, presenting a pole around which flesh and organs dance. The skeletal structure is no longer a cage in which flesh is contained, but a stage around which it performs. The hierarchy has been inverted.
Within the figures is a play between controlled linear design and painterly excess; an equivalent of a slow and fast shutter speed within one frame. Bacon described himself as a pulveriser, but Deleuze correctly describes him as a detective. From the mess of his butchering he searches for a harmony. Within this dialogue a tension is found when balance is violently excavated from a system not predisposed to order.
In the Crucifixion the force found is that of gravity, describing the sheer weight of flesh descending across the verticality of the surface. In his atheist reworking there is no potential for transcendence from the corporeal to the ethereal. We remain stuck in the meatiness of the moment.
Supporting the central figure are attendants in the left and right panel. On the left is a female figure leaving the stage and looking back with a disturbing disinterest. The mechanics of the figure, the twist of the hips in particular, are described with elegance. The two men in the right panel look outside of the frame, mundane spectators seemingly oblivious to the dramatic spectacle. This support cast heighten the sense of intense isolation in the main character.
The work is typical of bacon in its articulation of hysteria, what Deleuze called ‘galloping schizophrenia’. It speaks of the inherent frustration which is at the centre of tragedy in painting.
Bacon’s oeuvre should not be mistaken as a violent monologue. There exists a dichotomy in his work which attests to a more in-depth appreciation of the human condition. For the violent melodrama scream of the Crucifixion triptych exists the eloquent melancholic exhale present in a number of his George Dyer works. These works follow the suicide of Bacon’s lover. ‘Triptych, May-June 1973’ sees Dyer sat on the toilet, disturbed and vomiting. It is described, however, with a pathos and serenity not often attributed to Bacon. Even the violence of the ejaculatory white mark has a sense of poetry.
His diversity is also present in the wit of his numerous cricketer paintings. Characters such as David Gower appear on a glowing orange ground, naked except pads and wildly swishing at thin air.
This variety attests to a theatre verging on Shakespearian in its depth. Bacon is not singular, he is more than the horror of the silent scream.
Some other Whalecrow blogs on bacon:
Deleuze on Bacon Chapter Eight
Deleuze on Bacon: Chapter Seven- hysteria
Deleuze on Bacon: Chapter Six- painting and sensation
Deleuze on Bacon: Chapter Four
Deleuze on Bacon: Chapter Three
Deleuze on Bacon: Chapter two- study of a dog 1952
Obviously a piece of writing from an artist who has thoroughly studied Bacon and has taken great inspiration from his painting. I can agree with your comments which say to me that Bacon controls the horrors of the image with the structure of the painting almost keeping these horrors trapped in the cubic space using structural lines, colour and painterly expertise to seduce the viewer entrapping them within the delight of his nightmare.
Nigel Waters
2 Oct 08 at 9:06 pm