DONGDONG'S BLOG: Research on the Work of Francis Bacon

It must be said that the understanding of artworks can depend on the acquaintance of the background of artists or artwork in some cases: that is, the collaboration between artist and viewer bases on the extent of research towards artist, the society and the times in which he/she lives. Every piece of artwork is not isolated, which is created in a particular circumstance. Due to the fact that times and social environment exerts intangible impact on the artist, the cultural features of such a particular time period always accompany the personal emotions of artist in the artwork.

Images were first made to conjure up to the appearances of something that was absent. Gradually it became evident that an image could outlast what is represented. It then showed how something or somebody had once looked – and thus by implication how the subject had once been seen by other people. (Berger, 1972 p. 10)

The original purpose of artwork is to record and represent the historical event or experience of artists themselves or other persons on a particular occasion by creators’ extraordinary form of artistic expression. However, some kinds of overwhelmingly emotional way of expression make it difficult for people who live in the contemporary society to know exactly what is the original meanings of old images, what is worse, the confusion could make the historical evidence totally meaningless. Undoubtedly, it is the devastating disaster of art, even of human beings. As a consequence, in order to avoid the mistake, it is very essential for people to do research towards the background of the specific image. Understanding the meaning requires people to know the artists’ personal and social status when they create the works, and then the transformation between reality and art in the meaning of artwork can be achieved.

Take paintings of Francis Bacon as an example. When people look at his work, they encounter depictions of human bodies twisting, melting away and in some cases dissolving. ‘Basically, all his pictures are metaphors of life in which the dialectics of coming into being and perishing, life and death are inscribed.’ (Zweite, 2006 p. 9) So if people do not know that he experienced the Second World War and witnessed the bloodiness of the war, they cannot understand the meaning of the twisted faces of lonely, brutal, horrible, angry and excited figures.

One of Bacon’s work Painting 1978 (Fig. 1) that is untitled shows a male figure turning a key with his foot. When you first see this work, you would be confused – who are two persons, why do the naked man turn the door with his foot? Actually, this work is to memorize George Dyer (1934 - 1971) who is Bacon’s most intimate lover and model, and to express Bacon’s long shadow of the suicide of Dyer. Because of his death, Bacon fell into a longtime sadness and could not stop to miss him, even through Bacon experienced the darkest time of the world. Also, he believed the sadness cannot be healed by time, which only by painting to relieve the feeling.

In painting an individual, in the interview with David Sylvester in the 1960s and 1970s, he mentioned, he is ‘trying to get near not only to their appearance but also to the way they have affected you, because every shape has an implication’. Indeed, when you research his paintings, you can find out his paintings continues to push the boundaries of form and colour by portraying an emotional response to reality rather than merely replicating the external world, which means the implication of some objects in his works is beyond the appearance to the inner complicated emotion. The locked domestic door, which is used in some of his works, as a symbol of existential imprisonment, in a sense, could be transformed to an ineffaceable memory or a huge sadness in this picture.

Compared with Painting 1978, the door, as an abstractly symbolic object, in Triptych – In Memory of George Dyer (Fig. 2), which is created in the year of Dyer’s suicide, is the key connection of three images and seems easier to understand the inner meaning. Thus it can be seen, the meaning of the door is gradually changing over the seven years, from a visibly connected object to an intangibly abstract symbol of the brutal reality. If people do not pay attention to the original meaning of it, how can they exactly know the further meaning of the latter one and the relationship between them?

The brutality in his paintings reveals not only the sadness of his own but the chaos of society to some degree. Indeed, in its own way his work is close to the world that people see every day and is the reflection of the society in that time by transforming the way people felt and thought and visualizing different emotions. Just as Bacon said ‘I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and memory trace of past events.’ (1955/56 p. 63)

It is universally acknowledged that Bacon likes to take deformity and morbidity as his theme, and he is good at using different painting skills and powerful brushes to represent loneliness, brutality, ghastfulness, indignation and excitement of human appearance. What is more, he bases on his inner mirage and suffering to express the ruined mentality of twisting and crush by maniac brush. It can be seen clearly from the Painting 1946 (Fig. 3), the representation of human appearance is odd, in some cases, aggressive and terrified. Compared with the Jean Dubuffet (1901 - 1985) who depicted the existence sense of isolation and sadness after the 2^nd World War, his distress is more spiritual and profound.

‘In Sylvester’s eyes Bacon is a tragic painter who succeeded in a unique way in distorting forms to just such an extent that they did not lose their connection with reality, thus heightening the viewer’s attention.’ (Zweite, 2006 p. 79) Indeed, as far as impact force is concerned, the mental panic in his paintings is dramatic, which comes from disastrous reportage and the visual description of concentration camp and bloodbath after the 2^nd World War, which is accompanied with a kind of crisis awareness of surrealism and unapparent innervation of imagination. He describes the despair of the postwar Europe by different transformed scenes based on a large number of photographs, which consist of some elements of entirely different types, such as photographs of newspapers, stage and moving animals.

Despite the intention of violence and disaster in Bacon’s work with which people are bombarded, the turbulent and overwhelmingly emotional works make people feel them and get under our skin, which exactly is what they intend to say to contemporary people in the video-saturated, digitally-enhanced age. It is, I think, as Schama mentioned in the television series Power of Art – Picasso (2006, 60 mins.), ‘the ultimate backhanded compliment to the power of art’.

‘Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence – a reconcentration, ’ said Bacon in an interview in 1973. Naturally, the meaning of the work for people nowadays is to evoke them to reconcentrate the fact of their old time, as well as Bacon’s life in that time. Thus, only by understanding the information of background above, can people truly interpret the relationship among the twisted shape in paintings, Bacon himself and the society of such a particular period and the meaning of his paintings. Also, it is the fundamental requirement to achieve the meaning of great art, which means the meaning of Bacon’s work should be collaborated between Bacon and viewer.