Pared Pairings. [12] Two Figures, 1953 Francis Bacon. Deleuze on Bacon, Painting Series

by Corry Shores
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[Entry collecting the images of the paintings.]

[Index of painting entries in the Deleuze on Bacon series].

[I am profoundly grateful to the source of this image:

petulantrumblings.com

Credits given at the end.]

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

Pared Pairings

(Thanks

petulantrumblings.com)

Francis Bacon

Two Figures, 1953

Private Collection, Great Britain

Painting 41 of Deleuze's

Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures

Painting [12] of the English translation

and Painting [76] of the Seuil 2002 French

Such is the case here, where the coupling of sensations from different levels creates the coupled Figure (and not the reverse). What is painted is the sensation. There is a beauty to these entangled Figures [69]. They do not merge with each other, but are rendered indiscernible by the extreme precision of the lines, which acquire a kind of autonomy in relation to the body, like a diagram whose lines would bring together nothing but sensation. [footnote 1] There is one Figure common to two bodies, or one "fact" common to two Figures, without the slightest story being narrated [12, 17, 60, 61]. (Deleuze 2003: 46-47)

C'est bien le cas ici, où l'accouplement des sensation à niveaux différents fait la Figure accouplée (et non; l'inverse). Ce qui est peint, c'est la sensation. Beauté de ces Figures mêlées [76]. Elles ne sont pas confondues, mais rendues indiscernables par l'extrême précision des lignes qui acquièrent une sorte d'autonomie par rapport aux corps : comme dans un diagramme dont les lignes n'uniraient que des sensations [note 59]. Il y a une Figure commune des deux corps, ou un « fait » commun des deux Figures, sans la moindre histoire à raconter [41, 17, 14 [[sic: 1]], 2]. (Deleuze 2002: 65-66)

[Bacon painted coupled figures to couple the sensations they give us. Scrambling marks tangle them together, even though each one strikes us in different varying ways. Because the irrational marks were randomly produced, they mix-up the elements of the painting in such a way that no story can be told to explain what we see, even though there is evidently something incredible happening.]

(Again, thanks

petulantrumblings.com)

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.

Image obtained gratefully from:

http://petulantrumblings.com/?p=9756

Coagulated Copulation

by Corry Shores
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[Image credits are under the image itself and at the end. May I thank the source, www.sai.msu.su].

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Coagulated Copulation

In the 9th chapter of Logic of Sensation, Deleuze writes that Bacon couples sensations, which then produces coupled figures. Bacon begins with irrational markings, and from them paints an image that strikes our nervous systems with the sensation he wants us to have. Deleuze cites part of an interview where Bacon explains how he wanted to paint the 'coagulated' sensation of two copulating figures. The following expands that cited quotation.

David Sylvester: When it has crystallized for you, do you know it immediately or do you need a few weeks or months to be sure?

Francis Bacon: Well, if my work goes at all well, it goes very quickly. For instance, in the orange triptych of 1970 which you said that you quite liked, where the centre panel has two figures on a bed - well, I knew that I wanted to put two figures together on a bed, and I knew that I wanted them in a sense either to be copulating or buggering - whichever way you like to put it - but I didn't know how to do it so that it would have the strength of the sensation which I had about it. I just had to leave it to chance to attempt to make an image. I wanted to make an image which coagulated this sensation of two people in some form of sexual act on the bed, but then I was left completely in the void and left absolutely to the haphazard marks which I make all the time. And then I worked on what's called the given form. And, if you look at the forms, they're extremely, in a sense, unrepresentational. One of the things I've always tried to analyze is why it is that, if the formation of the image that you want is done irrationally, it seems to come onto the nervous system much more strongly than if you knew how you could do it. Why is it possible to make the reality of an appearance more violently in this way than by doing it rationally? Perhaps it's that, if the making is more instinctive, the image is more immediate. (Bacon & Sylvester 102-104, emphasis mine)

[Below are images from the coupled figures of the

Triptych, Studies from the Human Body, 1970 that Bacon refers-to here.]

(Thanks Editions de la différence and the Estate of Francis Bacon)

Bacon, Francis & David Sylvester. The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987.

More information from the publisher here:

http://www.thamesandhudson.com/9780500274750.html

Images obtained gratefully from:

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

The Necessity of Cyclical Chaos, Nietzsche, La Volonté de puissance, Livre II, 326

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary and not translation. Please check my interpretation against the original text, which is reproduced at the end.]

Friedrich Nietzsche

La Volonté de puissance

I

Livre II:

Morphologie et évolution de la Volonté de Puissance

326

Previously we saw that chaos and eternal return are not mutually exclusive principles. For, one essential reason that the world never stops returning is because absolute chaos is always reconfiguring things, and through infinite time the same things will repeat. This is absolutely necessary. So we have no choice. We, like the cosmos, must eternally recur.

326

Le « chaos universel » qui exclut toute activité à finalité n’est pas contradictoire avec l’idée du cycle : celui-ci n’est justement qu’une nécessité irrationnel, sans aucune arrière-pensée formelle, éthique ou esthétique. La liberté du choix est absente des petites comme des grandes choses.

1881-82 (XII, 1^re partie, § 110)

(p.297-298)

Nietzsche, Friedrich. La Volonté de puissance, I. Transl. G. Bianquis. Paris: Gallimard, 1938.

The Density of the Irrational Numbers

by Corry Shores
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Scott Wollschleger asks in the comments to the The Density of the Rational Numbers post:

what about the density of an irrational number?

In this previous post we said that between any two rational numbers a and b there is another rational number c. We may make each of these irrational by setting them over the square root of 2.

Thus between any two irrational numbers there is another irrational number: the density of the irrationals.

based on the proof in:

http://math.nyu.edu/~tsang/classes/precalc1/session1.pdf