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Kari Kok Francis Bacon Screaming in Oils

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Kari Kok Francis Bacon Screaming in Oils Kari Kok Francis Bacon Screaming in Oils “The reek of human blood smiles out at me.” This line from Aeschylus's play Oresteia aptly describes Francis Bacon's Painting 1946. The subject matter of the painting consists of an open-mouthed stocky man clad in black clothes with his upper face obscured by a black umbrella. The figure is framed by a butchered carcass of meat that serves to draw further attention to the man by forming a grotesque curtain around him in the background. Various meats and offal are also arranged on a circular railing and scattered about on a dais before the figure. The man's upper lip is stained with blood as if he has been partaking of the carnage around him. The colors Bacon used in this work are stark and lurid; the hues of flesh, blood, and death in pink, red, and black. The bone white of the railing and the flayed meat serves as a counterbalance to the darker hues of red and black that dominate the work. The painting was executed in oils with analytic brushwork. Bacon often sought to represent the elements of his paintings in a clear manner and strove to make his technique precise (Tóibín 135). How the composition of Painting 1946 is arranged serves to direct the viewer's attention to the graphic visceral elements, namely that of the tortured flesh and the emotional angst of the central figure. Bacon wished to show the disintegration of matter through his paintings as a “way of reflecting the nothingness of existence” (Braun 68). The background is laid out on a vertical scale, emphasized by the broad, vertical planes of pink and red, while the empty void of black in the center serves to draw the viewer's eye to the figures of the meat and man. The painting illustrates Bacon's philosophy of the futility of humankind's existence, that “we are little more than potential carcasses” (Braun 32). Bacon claimed to have poured out the summation of his knowledge and expertise into Painting 1946— in an interview, he explained: “It was like one continuous accident mounting on top of another” (Tóibín 133). Although counted among the European Expressionists, Bacon's work has a feeling of dark Surrealism to it with the smeared and distorted human-like forms that repeatedly show up in his paintings. When the macabre and grotesque tableau of Painting 1946 was first shown in an exhibition, it prompted reactions of revulsion, fear, and disgust. Art critic Mark Scala described it as: “a feeling of being in the presence of death produced by the sight of actual viscera, organs, or brains” (Scala 2). Bacon was born in 1909 in Dublin, Ireland. Throughout his life Bacon encountered conflict—beginning in his childhood when he was exposed to strife from the civil uprising of the Senn Fein. He moved to London with his family during WWI, lived through the worst of the German bombing, and narrowly missed being drafted to fight in WWII due to asthma (Tóibín 132). Bacon went on to design Modernist furniture and carpets to support himself before turning to painting. Having lived through several violent, tumultuous periods and the horror of two wars, Kok 2 his artwork was subsequently affected by it. Bacon was influenced by other artists, most notably Picasso—whom he learned a great deal from and was inspired to take up a career in painting after viewing a gallery exhibition of his in 1927 (Tóibín 147). Although he had very little formal training as a painter, he studied art history extensively; and he drew inspiration and ideas from Muybridge, Velasquez, Degas, and Michelangelo (Tóibín 141). After the 1930's, Bacon's production of art slowed as he was particularly fond of drinking and gambling (Tóibín 148). He was not entirely successful in his new career until painting Crucifixion in 1933 and his first successful exhibition consisted of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, Figure in a Landscape, and Painting 1946 (Sylvester 95). Bacon read Nietzsche and identified with Existentialism. Scala notes that Bacon, “was not lacking faith, but that his faith was in the meaninglessness of existence” (Scala 7). The elements of the painting – the meat, railing are all arranged around the central figure as if the man is standing enshrined by carnage and glorifying violence. It is a testament to the violence of the time. The wide-scale devastation and destruction caused by WWII left behind a sense of cynicism, hopelessness, and despair in the wake of the destruction. Bacon focused on these feelings—the sense of betrayal and disillusion after the progressive years of the Enlightenment—and brought them to life in his work. Painting 1946 was completed in England shortly after WWII ended. The painting is a commentary on the impact the chaos and devastation of the war had on society (Kleiner 971). The artist heightened this effect in Painting 1946 through the arrangement of gutted and flayed carcasses encircling the dominant male figure. The dark central figure becomes a symbol of all humankind reveling in a feast of slaughter. Painting 1946 reflects both a social and a personal function. Bacon created a social commentary on the brutality and horror of war as well as the hopelessness of existence, and this can be seen through his frequent portrayal of the body in pain. Bacon wanted to appeal to the nervous system rather the mind to elicit a reaction or evoke emotion from those who viewed his work (Tofts 78). The painting also serves a personal function as it reflects Bacon's existential beliefs—that humankind's existence is devoid of meaning and this message is aimed at every individual who views his imagery—that death is inescapable and one day, they too, will become little more than meat. Form directed the appearance of Bacon's work through his objective of trying to achieve the creation of Anti-representational art (Tofts 80). Bacon wished to dispense with “illustrational marks” and attempt to reproduce his chosen content with “non-rational marks” instead. The subject matter was not as important as the form and composition of the painting. Bacon's attitude follows art critic Clement Greenberg's ideals of the avant-garde, for Greenberg was concerned Kok 3 primarily with the formal aspects of artwork and cared little for subject matter or content. While Bacon wished to follow Greenberg's tenets regarding form, he was not entirely successful in his endeavor—he was still attached to rendering recognizable subject matter and content in his paintings albeit in a distorted style. Like Jackson Pollock, Bacon shared an interest in the act of painting itself that helped direct the appearance of his work. The end product was inconsequential to him—a mere record of the process of painting. Because of these views, it was not uncommon for Bacon to destroy his works, that he considered them “failures to embody the process that went into their making” (Tofts 77). Only the intervention of peers from Marlborough Fine Art managed to save some of his early work from destruction (Tofts 77). Rather than focusing on line or construction, Bacon chose to study the consistency, tone, and texture of the paint itself (Tóibín 132). According to Bacon, the objective he was trying to achieve in his art was to “make an image of appearance that is conditioned as little as possible by the accepted standards of what appearance is” (Tofts 80). Here the artist was faced with a frustrating dilemma: for if he worked with likenesses and appearances—as noted with the figure of the man, the umbrella, railing, and hanging meat—he was forced to paint them in an illustrative and therefore somewhat accurate manner (Tofts 79). This quandary is compounded by Bacon's refusal to resort to abstraction. He preferred his paintings to be composed of irrational marks but admitted that his goal was impossible unless he became willing to give up his style of illustration and precise technique of rendering (Tofts 80). Darren Tofts wrote about Bacon's objective and style in painting: “For Bacon, the violent distortion of appearance is necessary to 'break the willed anticipation of the image', for in the age of photography and mechanical reproduction, painting has had to re-define its function in relation to appearance” (Tofts 77). Bacon sought to combine several elements and concepts in an innovative and unique way—creating his own identifiable personal style. Bacon's innovation during his career was to depict the human body in a distorted and unflinchingly visceral manner—to turn it inside-out. This is seen predominately in the treatment of the elements in Painting 1946, they have the look and feel of carcasses of raw meat while the human figure is wracked with tortured emotion. Bacon worked from photographs and memory; he also used film, X-rays, and photographs taken from forensic and medical sources. Bacon's innovative style was to render a likeness in realistic style and then distort, deform it. Art critic Emily Braun provides further insight on Bacon's technique: “He reserves his most extreme deformations for the head and hands, the primary portals of the senses, as if to emphasize the language-destroying capacity and paradoxical sensory deprivation of acute distress” (Braun 33). How the paint is smeared over the faces of Bacon's figures alludes to obliteration and disintegration—the act of defacing the flesh symbolizes decay and the dissolution of matter. Kok 4 Bacon focused on the mouth of his figures and tried to incorporate the emotive capabilities of it into his work as much as possible.
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