‘Seeing-as’: The Modality of Looking in Bacon’s Portraiture

Abstract

This article examines Francis Bacon’s treatment of portraits of sitters who were close to him – a closeness that is seen in the intimacy of their portrayals. Bacon cut through the surface to capture the energy of a person. This study articulates Bacon’s pictorial problem by arguing for a particular way of ‘seeing-as’, to draw on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy, that involves the ‘noticing of an aspect’ or ‘dawning of an aspect’. Interpreting Bacon’s portraits by using Wittgenstein’s understanding of perceptual concepts and the phenomenological perspective of the immediacy of experience presents a novel way of looking at his work.

Keywords:

• Francis Bacon
• portraits
• phenomenology
• the figural

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Gregg M. Horowitz, ‘Scratching the Surface’, addresses the subject squarely.

2 Norman Bryson uses the metaphor of surgery (the surgical operation more specifically) to describe the depth Bacon goes to ‘extract’ the essence of the person. Bryson discusses this in particular with reference to Bacon’s Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953) which he believes ‘dismantles’ [the] ‘ascesis’ of Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650). See Bryson, ‘Bacon’s Dialogues’ p. 46).

3 This ambivalent dynamic is discussed with respect to disgust in Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror and with respect to horror in Noël Carrol’s paradox of horror (Philosophy of Horror, p. 160) both of which concern how we can be attracted to that which is repulsive.

4 See Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I. II, xi, p. 212; I. II, XI, p. 193.

5 Sylvester, Interviews pp. 17, 22).

6 Sylvester, Interviews p. 54.

7 Bacon, ‘Matthew Smith’. p.12.

8 Lubbock, Review of Francis Bacon.

9 The sheer number of destroyed and abandoned canvases can be used as evidence to convey the significance of the painterly process in his work (see Harrison with Daniels, Francis Bacon for a record of these works).

10 West, 2004, p. 21.

11 Gaskell, ‘Portraiture Portrayed’, p. 1.

12 The backgrounds to his paintings are typically anonymous, (de)void of/lacking in information of personal information and can be likened to hotel rooms.

13 Calvocoressi, ‘Bacon: Public and Private’, p. 11.

14 It is plausible to include the following examples in the broader category of portraits: his Head series (in 1948 and 1949), his studies of for portraits in the 1950s, including his papal series of the 1952.

15 This description, ‘head-as-flesh’, is employed in Harrison with Daniels, Francis Bacon, p. 584 for example.

16 Some of his very early portraits do not fit with this analysis, however, as they are naturalistic. For example, Portrait c. 1930. The explanation given for this is that he was in an exploratory phase of his technique. See Harrison with Daniels, Francis Bacon Vol. I., p. 116.

17 As in his ‘portraits’ of George Dyer in ‘the Black Triptychs’ that were made to memorialize Dyer’s death and include Triptych – August 1972 (1972) and Triptych May–June 1973 (1973) Bacon.

18 Sylvester, Interviews, p. 175.

19 van Alphen, Francis Bacon, p. 82.

20 Leiris and Weightman, Francis Bacon, p. 3; Forge, ‘About Bacon’, p. 25.

21 This phrase is Tom Lubbock’s (See Lubbock, Review of Francis Bacon).

22 This gesture of the hand raised to the face was sometimes used in Bacon’s portraits of Lucian Freud.

23 Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne (1966) is an apt example of how Bacon does not apply distortion to his depiction of clothing. The grotesque and almost demented look on the sitter’s face is at odds with the glamorous plush overcoat that she is clothed in.

24 Leiris and Weightman, Francis Bacon, Leiris, p. 6.

25 Russell, Francis Bacon, p. 38.

26 Bacon, ‘Matthew Smith’, p. 12.

27 Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, p. x.

28 Ibid.

29 Muir, 1996.

30 Sylvester, Interviews, p. 41.

31 Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, p. 139.

32 Sylvester, Interviews.

33 Hammer, ‘Francis Bacon’, p. 357.

34 Here Ernst van Alphen (Francis Bacon, p.32) is referring to the analysis John Berger made of Bacon’s work, where distortion is used as a tool to establish ‘a more direct contact with the viewer’.

35 Philosophical Investigations involved the marked shift in Wittgenstein’s views about linguistic meaning that he presented in the 1922 work Tractatus Logio-philosophicus. In particular the Investigations concerns the relation between linguistic meaning and the use of words (‘language games’).

36 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I. II, xi, p. 193.

37 Schroeder, A Tale of Two Problems’, p. 353.

38 Ibid., pp. 353–4.

39 Ibid., p. 354.

40 Friday, ‘Wittgenstein’ (unpaged).

41 The original text, Logique de la sensation (1981) was translated into English in 2003. Deleuze Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation.

42 Deleuze, ‘Francis Bacon’, p. 15.

43 There are numerous examples of Bacon’s portraits that resemble the types of reflections one would expect to see in a hall of mirrors. Three Studies for a Self-Portrait (1967) fits the bill for example, and showcases different types of illusory effects.

44 See Hammer, ‘Clearing away the screens’, p.17.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rina Arya

Rina Arya is Professor of Visual Culture and Theory at the University of Huddersfield. She has published widely on Francis Bacon, art and religion, and aspects of South Asian visual culture. She is the author of Francis Bacon: Painting in a Godless World and is currently writing a book about the cultural appropriation of Hindu symbols.