Bacon

My first introduction to Francis Bacon was through a furniture painting project presented to my class four or five years ago. A friend o mine chose to paint one of Bacon's screaming Pope Innocent X's on the back of an old radio. Until a few weeks back when I saw the Bacon Centenary Retrospective at the MET, Bacon to me meant monsters with scary teeth and screaming Popes.

His work along with its followers has always given me the chills. When I thought of Bacon I thought of monsters. Now I see Bacon's influence the more I think about his grotesque distorted figures with gaping mouths filled with blood and teeth.



His piece Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion done in 1944, was one of the very first pieces at the exhibit. The 'Figures' are textbook bacon represented to me what he was all about.



Dead Hands from Zelda Ocarina of Time was always the most frightening of the Zelda monsters for me. It made me fear the Shadow Temple where it lived and where I had to fight it. The figure would lurch around slowly, while making a disturbing creaking noise and then snap its neck out and bite you. Like much of Bacon's paintings all of Dead Hand's power was in its mouth.



The 'Child-Eating Monster' in Pan's Labyrinth was hands down not only the most frightening thing in that movie but one of the most frightening things I'd ever seen. I had a conversation about this monster with my professor who explained what made it so alarming. The absence of something, in this case eyes. If you leave just one important feature out, it becomes alarming. A figure without a mouth or nose is frightening as well. Think Lord Voldermort for the nose. Its what makes him freaky.

Bacon's fascination with the mouth carries over to his portraits of animals such as Study of a Baboon. done in 1953



His technique called 'shuttering' also influenced me. In the exhibit it was explained as "Using vertical lines of paint that blend foreground and background. It merges the figure and the setting, with neither taking precedence."



Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X 1953


Study From the Human Body, 1949

Aside from his personal fascinations and painting techniques, the exhibit was a tortured love story. George Dyer was his lover and live in companion for some time during the 60's and 70's before succumbing to alcoholism. Dyer's life, love and death are remembered in the second half of the exhibition through distorted portraits and naked figures.


The handsome George Dyer

The gallery ends with Bacon's paintings reflecting on the deaths of those around him. There was no inconsistency in this since his work never left the darker facets of life, it just seemed sad. It felt like watching an old man die who's life you had just seen and now felt it was partly yours too.