Bacon's beasts: The pathos of the animal in the art of Francis Bacon(1909-1982).

Arya, Rina

Abstract

Opening paragraph:
From his early years in rural Ireland to his last painting, Study of a bull (Pl 1), the condition of animality was a lifelong preoccupation of Francis Bacon (1909–1982). The 2022 exhibition at the Royal Academy, ‘Francis Bacon: Man and Beast’, both expressed the many facets his fascination took and also showcased the range of his depictions of forms that blurred the boundaries between the human and the animal. The animal was framed in relation to the human, in a fluid and changeable relationship. For Bacon, at a fundamental level, the human is an animal because it is mortal, and he conveyed this by appealing to the nature of organic things, essentially the fact that they decay. From collapsing heads in his series of the same name of the late 1940s to portrayals of bodies that overflow the boundaries of the skin and cannot be contained by the skeleton, the flesh is in a state of perpetual instability in its vitality and destruction. Representation cannot halt natural processes and only uncovers them. Bacon evokes the condition of embodiment – that is, what it feels like to have and be in a body. And it is this rupture that causes sensory tumult in viewers, who are drawn to the fleshy surfaces and yet repelled by the feelings they generate.

Citation

Arya, R. (2024). Bacon's beasts: The pathos of the animal in the art of Francis Bacon(1909-1982). The British art journal, 24(2), 57-60

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 1, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jan 9, 2024
• Publication Date: Jan 22, 2024
• Deposit Date: Sep 4, 2024
• Journal: The British Art Journal.
• Print ISSN: 1467-2006
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 57-60
• Item Discussed: Francis Bacon
• Keywords: Francis Bacon
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4794492
• Publisher URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/48760521