Bacon’s Sphinx, 1954, in Deleuze’s Francis Bacon commentary

 

by Corry Shores

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[Entry collecting the images of the paintings in this text.]

[I am profoundly grateful to the sources of these images:

museumtv.nl

www.buzzle.com

euroartmagazine.com

Credits given at the end.]

 

[The following is quotation. My commentary is in brackets. Proofreading is incomplete, so please excuse my typos.]

 

 

Francis Bacon

 

Sphinx, 1954

 

(Thanks museumtv.nl)

 

 

Painting 81 of Deleuze’s
Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures
Painting [18] of the English translation
and Painting [81] of the Seuil 2002 French

 

 

From the text:

À travers les siècles, bien des choses font de Bacon un Égyptien. Les aplats, le contour, la forme et le fond comme deux secteurs également proches sur le même plan, l’extrême proximité de la Figure (présence), le système de la netteté. Bacon rend à | l’Égypte l’hommage du sphinx, et déclare son amour de la sculpture égyptienne [...] Toutefois, si proche que Bacon soit de l’Égypte, comment expliquer que son sphinx [81] soit brouillé, traité « malerisch » ?

(Deleuze 1981a: 79|80; 2002: 116b,c)

 

Through the centuries, there are many things that make Bacon an Egyptian: the fields, the contour, the form and the ground as two equally close sectors lying on the same plane, the extreme proximity of the Figure (presence), the system of clarity [netteté]. Bacon renders to Egypt the homage of the sphinx [18], and declares his love for Egyptian sculpture [...] Yet as close as Bacon may be to Egypt, how can we explain the fact that his sphinx is scrambled, treated in a “malerisch” manner?

(Deleuze 2003a: 100ab,c; 2003b: 123c,124b; 2005:86b,c)

[Note, the painting in the French editions is cited at the end of the paragraph, and in the English editions near the beginning.]

 

Commentary:

[Bacon admired Egyptian art. Deleuze identifies certain features in Bacon’s style that can be attributed to that influence. For example, in Egyptian bas-relief, the figures are set along the 2-dimensional plane of their background.

 

(Thanks www.buzzle.com)

 

We often see something similar in Bacon’s paintings.

 

[1] Francis Bacon: Triptych, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944.

(euroartmagazine.com Thanks Dr. Gerry Coulter)

 

But in this Sphinx painting, where Bacon pays tribute to Egyptian art, the Figure does not itself have very clearly discernible features, and it is not so clearly discernible with respect to its background. Deleuze wonders why.

 

[18] Francis Bacon: Sphinx, 1954

(Thanks museumtv.nl)

 

Bacon, we learn, adds manual, accidental traits to disrupt the figurative givens, which is why his art is not simply geometrical and discernible like Egyptian art.]

 

 

 

Texts:

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 1981a. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome I. Paris: Éditions de la différence.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1981b. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures. Paris: Éditions de la différence.

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2002. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Paris: Éditions du seuil.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2003a. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s introduction (Smith’s “Deleuze on Bacon: Three Conceptual Trajectories in The Logic of Sensation”) and author’s introduction to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2003b. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s preface, preface to the fourth edition by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, author’s foreword, and author’s preface to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2005. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s preface, preface to the fourth edition by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, author’s foreword, and author’s preface to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. London/ New York: Continuum.

 

 

 

Images obtained gratefully from:

https://www.museumtv.nl/app/uploads/2016/10/1953-Francis-Bacon-Sphinx.jpg

 

www.buzzle.com/articles/bas-relief-vs-high-relief-sculpture-technique.html

 

http://www.euroartmagazine.com/new/?issue=6&page=1&content=140

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