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[The following is quotation. My commentary is bracketed in red.]
Moving through Paralysis
Francis Bacon: After Muybridge - Woman Emptying a Bowl of Water and Paralytic Child, 1965
Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich
Painting 34 of Deleuze's Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures
Painting [36] of the English translation, and
Painting [34] of the Seuil 2002 French
The round area or the parallelepiped that isolates the Figure itself becomes a motor, and Bacon has not abandoned the project that a mobile sculpture could achieve more easily: in this case, the contour or pedestal would slide along the length of the armature so that the Figure could make its "daily round". [Footnote 15] [...] It is the stroll of the paralytic child and its mother clinging to the edge of the balustrade in a curious race for the handicapped [36]. (Deleuze 2003: bc; c)L'isolant de la Figure, le rond ou le parallélépipède, deviennent eux-mêmes moteurs, et Bacon ne renonce pas au projet qu'une sculpture mobile réaliserait plus facilement : qui le contour ou le socle puissent se déplacer le long de l'armature, de telle manière que la Figure fasse un « petit tout » quotidien [note 38]. [...] C'est la promenade de l'enfant paralytique et de sa mère, crochetés sur le bord de la balustrade, dans une curieuse course à handicap. [34] (Deleuze 2002: 44cd; d)
[Bacon's figures give us a sense of motion. But it is a motionless motion, in a way, because it is motion that does not extend through physical space. It is motion and change of a whole other sort of magnitude, intensive magnitudes. We often sense that Bacon's figures are being pushed-and-pulled in many directions at once, and are caught between them, frozen in an instantaneous spasm.
Deleuze's point with this work seems to be that these intensive forces that we sense give us sensations. Then from those sensations we might imagine actual movement take place in the work. So in this painting, let's look at the paralytic child walking the balustrade.
We might also note its resemblance to the figure in Bacon's Paralytic Child Walking on All Fours (from Muybridge), 1961.
Bacon seems to have modeled this figure from these Muybridge images.
Below universoweb.com places the figures side-by-side.
(Thanks very much universoweb.com)
What Deleuze seems to be saying is this: it is not that we see different phases of movement through extensive space, which would then give us different levels of sensation. Rather, we sense inner tendencies in the figures. Forces push-and-pull the figures in many directions at once, suggesting different speeds, but actualizing none in extensive time and space. These tendencies in Bacon's paintings are not a snapshot of a single picture for where the figure wants to go and at what speed. Rather, on account of his scrambling techniques, we sense changes in the tendencies. These unpredictable changes of intensity cause us to feel different levels or valencies of sensation. We then secondarily translate these intensive changes as suggesting real movements in the figures. So it is not the motions that cause the sensations, but the sensations that cause the motions.
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.
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 gratefully obtained from:
Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures. Paris: Editions de la différence [Littératures], 1981.
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