11 Feb 2010

Geometry of Emotion [6] Bacon Head VI, 1949. Deleuze on Bacon, Painting Series

by Corry Shores
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[I am profoundly grateful to the sources of these images:
Credits given at the end.]

[The following is quotation. My commentary is bracketed in red.]



Geometry of Emotion

(Thanks www.nytimes.com.)


Francis Bacon

Head VI, 1949

Painting 6 of Deleuze's
Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures
Painting [6] of the English translation
and Painting [29] of the Seuil 2002 French


There are other techniques of isolation: putting the Figure inside a cube, or rather, inside a parallelepiped of glass or ice [6, 55]. (Deleuze 1d)

And the scream, Bacon's scream, is the operation through which the entire body escapes through the mouth [6]. (Deleuze 12a)


Il y a d'autres procédés d'isolation : mettre la Figure dans un cube, ou plutôt dans un parallélépipède de verre ou de glace [29, 19]. (Deleuze 11bc)

Et le cri, le cri de Bacon, c'est l'opération par laquelle le corps tout entier s'échappe par la bouche [29]. (Deleuze 24b)




[Note that a parallelogram is a four-sided plane figure with 2 pairs of parallel sides.

(Thanks coolmath.com)

When we combine 6 parallelograms together to produce a three-dimensional shape, we obtain a parallelepiped.

(Thanks gutenberg.org)

On the one hand, this isolates the painted figure and delimits the space enclosing it. On the other hand, it gives us the impression that it closes in on the figure, squeezing it like a water balloon, making its insides want to burst out of some hole. In this case, the figure's squeezed body tries to escape through the mouth in the form of a scream.]


Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Transl. Daniel W. Smith. London/New York: Continuum, 2003.

Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Paris: Seuil, 2002.

Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures. Paris: Editions de la différence [Littératures], 1981.


Images obtained gratefully from:


Head VI 1st instance:
Head VI 1949, Francis Bacon © The Estate of Francis Bacon/DACS 2008. Courtesy of the Tate.

Head VI 2nd instance:

Head VI 3rd instance:

Head VI 4th instance:


Parallelogram obtained gratefully from:

Parallelpiped from:
Treatise on Light, by Christiaan Huygens, Translated by Silvanus P. Thom



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