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by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]
[Francis Bacon (painter), entry directory]
[Deleuze’s Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, entry directory]
[Entry collecting the images of the paintings in this text.]
[I am profoundly grateful to the source of this image:
Credits given at the end.]
[The following is quotation. My commentary is in brackets. Proofreading is incomplete, so please excuse my typos.]
Francis Bacon
Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953
(Thanks artinvest2000.com)
Painting 54 of Deleuze’s
Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures
Painting [16] of the English translation
and Painting [54] of the Seuil 2002 French
From the text:
Tout le corps s’échappe par la bouche qui crie. Par la bouche ronde du pape [54] ou de la nourrice [55] le corps s’échappe comme par une artère.
(Deleuze 1981a: 23c; 2002: 33c)
The entire body escapes through the screaming mouth. The body escapes through the round mouth of the Pope or the nurse, as if through an artery [16, 24].
(Deleuze 2003a: 25c; 2003b: 28a; 2005:20d)
Commentary:
[In Bacon’s paintings, forces apply constricting pressure upon the Figures while at the same time there are forces internal to the Figure that are pushing outward, perhaps as a result of the constriction, like when squeezing a water balloon. On account of this play of forces, the Figure’s body tries to escape itself; and given the chance, it will dissipate through that escaping action. One exit for the escape is through the screaming mouth.
]
From the text:
À ce point extrême de la dissipation cosmique, dans un cosmos fermé mais illimité, c’est bien évident que la Figure ne peut plus être isolée, prise dans une limite, piste ou parallélépipède : on se trouve devant d’autres coordonnées. Déjà la Figure du pape [54] qui crie se tient derrière les lames épaisses, presque les lattes d’un rideau de sombre transparence : tout le haut du corps s’estompe, et ne subsiste que comme une marque sur un suaire rayé, tandis que le bas du corps reste encore hors du rideau qui s’évase. D’où l’effet d’éloignement progressif comme si le corps était tiré en arrière par la moitié supérieure. Et sur une assez longue période, le procédé est fréquent chez Bacon. Les mêmes lames verticales de rideau entourent et raient partiellement l’abominable sourire de « Étude pour un portrait [59] », tandis que la tête et le corps semblent aspirés || vers le fond, vers les lattes horizontales de la persienne.
(Deleuze 1981a: 24b; 2002: 34||35)
At this extreme point of cosmic dissipation, in a closed but unlimited cosmos, it is clear that the Figure can no longer be isolated or put inside a limit, a ring or parallelepiped: we are faced with different coordinates. The Figure of the screaming Pope [16] is already hidden behind the thick folds (which are almost laths) of a dark, transparent curtain: the top of the body is indistinct, persisting only as if it were a mark on a striped shroud, while the bottom of the body still remains outside the curtain, which is opening out. This produces the effect of a progressive elongation, as if the body were being pulled backwards by its upper half. For a rather long period of time, this technique appeared frequently in Bacon’s works. The same vertical curtain strips surround and partially line the abominable smile of Study for a Portrait [11], while the head and the body seem to sink into the background, into the horizontal slats of the blind.
(Deleuze 2003a: 26d; 2003b: 29b; 2005: 21c)
Commentary:
[We often see in Bacon’s paintings the Figure’s being confined within the limits of a geometrical structure, like a circular ring or platform or a rectilinear parallelepiped. But in this painting, which is during Bacon’s malerisch period, there are vertical smear stripes that seeming pull the Figure downward and sideward out of the bottom of its confining structure.
Bacon: Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953
(Thanks artinvest2000.com)
]
From the text:
Il faut considérer le cas spécial du cri. Pourquoi Bacon peut-il voir dans le cri l’un des plus hauts objets de la peinture [54] [55] ? « Peindre le cri… »
(Deleuze 1981a: 41a; 2002: 60b)
We must consider the special case of the scream. Why does Bacon think of the scream as one of the highest objects of painting? “Paint the scream . . .” [16, 24].
(Deleuze 2003a: 51a; 2003b: 60a; 2005: 42d)
Commentary:
[Recall from the first commentary the notion of the forces acting upon and within the Figure. To paint the scream is to paint those invisible forces.]
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:
http://www.artinvest2000.com/bacon_study-innocent-x.htm
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