12 Aug 2017

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

 

sphinx 1951 .. www.museumtv.nl .. 1953-Francis-Bacon-Sphinx

(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.

 

media.buzzle.com 1200-10924613-egyptian-basrelief

(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.

Bacon Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion 1944 might be high res www.euroartmagazine.com 1197105656

(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

sphinx 1951 .. www.museumtv.nl .. 1953-Francis-Bacon-Sphinx

(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.

FB.Fr.1981a

 

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

FB.Fr.2002

 

 

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.

FB.Eng.2003a

 

 

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.

FB.Eng.2003b.2

 

 

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.

FB.Eng.2003c.2

 

 

 

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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