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Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 10
Lesson 4: Postwar art in Britain- Modernism and its legacy
- Barbara Hepworth: Pioneering modern sculpture
- Barbara Hepworth, Pelagos
- Room: Henry Moore
- Describing what you see: Sculpture (Henry Moore, Reclining Figure)
- Bacon, Triptych - August 1972
- Freud, Standing by the Rags
- Room: 1940s
- Room: 1950s
- Room: 1960s
- The Berlin Wall and industrial England: Don McCullin's conflict photography
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Bacon, Triptych - August 1972
Francis Bacon, Triptych - August 1972, 1972, oil on canvas, 72 x 61 x 22 in. (183 x 155 x 64 cm), (Tate Modern, London) . Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Do modern artists often publish their thoughts in words about what they intended to communicate in some of these works?(15 votes)
- Yes, and you can find them in anthologies. One of the best is this: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Theory-1900-Anthology-Changing/dp/0631227083/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347294335&sr=8-1&keywords=art+theory(7 votes)
- At4:19, Dr Zucker says that "Bacon is of the generation of the Abstract Expressionists." What is Abstract Expressionism? When did it flourish?(7 votes)
- Abstract Expressionism is a quintessentially American movement that flourished after WWII. Artists usually associated with this movement are American and mostly deal with intensely abstract subject matter, like Jackson Pollock for example. I think Dr Zucker was trying to say that although this piece by Bacon retains a figurative element it feels like it borrowed from the energetic brush work and paint drippings of the AbEx. It's also good to remember all this was happening at a time when the art world's focus had shifted from Europe to America.(11 votes)
- Why do these scare me for some reason? I just see all these deformed shapes and I feel afraid, like, terrified... A li'l help here please(6 votes)
- Many of the paintings and prints were meant to scare people. This was the age of shock value. Since America was coming out of an age of repression from the 40's, and with the two bloody world wars still pressing upon people's minds, artists looked for new ways to challenge people. This was done, in many ways, through scary and deformed images. While art really should be enjoyed and analyzed by the piece alone, it is helpful to know the background information. Francis Bacon was born in Ireland at a time when the outlook was very bleak, and this attitude carried into his work, specifically in paintings that document the human condition like the Triptych paintings do.(5 votes)
- Does anyone think that Francis Bacon paintings (including this one) represent memory distorted by an emotion such as fear or anger?(6 votes)
- Does anyone notice a figure of a woman's face in black, emerging from the neck of the lover in the chair on the left triptych?(4 votes)
- Glad that you pointed that out. What do you think that means? That she will forever be a part of him, even though she is gone? Or do you think it means she is just there to haunt him? But that's very strange. Francis Bacon, the painter who painted this triptych was a homosexual. His lover that died was a man, George Dyer.(5 votes)
- how are these paintings difficult to grasp??4:43They are very literal representations of bacon's emotions.(5 votes)
- i think they are difficult to grasp if you don't know the context in which these paintings were made. One of the important aspects of art is to know what the artist was going on when he made his work, such as Picasso in his blue period.
So if you didn't know that Bacon's lover had comitted suicide you cound't understad that much of the triptych, you only sense its violence(2 votes)
- what if we dint have none of this stuff(1 vote)
- Under rules of grammar, we would then have this stuff.(3 votes)
- Am I right in thinking that Francis Bacon created this completely of his own volition, as opposed being commissioned for the work or something? Did it exist somewhere else before coming to the museum?(2 votes)
- This triptych was just auctioned for a new record price, yesterday. :-D(1 vote)
- That was not this one, it was another triptych painted by Bacon but in this case it was about the artist Lucian Freud.(2 votes)
- what are the names of these three paintings ?(1 vote)
- Three paintings as one would be called a "Triptych." This triptych is also named, "Triptych."(2 votes)
Video transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: We're
in the Tate Modern, and we're looking
at a Francis Bacon, actually we're looking
at three Francis Bacon's. This is one work of art, but
in three large, painted panels. It's a triptych. In fact, that's the title. DR. BETH HARRIS: Normally,
when I think about a triptych, I think about Renaissance or
a Medieval altar piece that's in three panels
that are connected, and therefore something that is
spiritual, a religious scene. But here we are in the 20th
century using that format, but there is something dark and
spiritual about these images. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: These were
deeply personal paintings and the subject couldn't be
closer to home for the artist. DR. BETH HARRIS: You can
tell how personal they are. On either side, these figures
are very, very powerfully depicted. That seems very psychological,
and personal, and emotional, and profound, from the way that
he's treating the human body. Tell me about what the
personal aspect is. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: So within
these very spare renderings we have a representation
of George Dyer on the left. This is Francis
Bacon's lover, who had just recently
committed suicide. In fact, this
painting is generally seen as one of the
series of black paintings that are in a way, a kind
of chronicle of his response to this event. You've got the artist
himself, the self portrait, and then in the middle, you've
got this composite creature. You can just make out two
bodies in a kind of violent love Making. The reference that is usually
drawn by our historians is to the English
photographer more bridge who invented the strobe light
and was the first person to use photography to freeze
animals and people in action. He did a famous
series of wrestlers, from which this is drawn. But of course, that
scientific context is completely transformed
in this personal context. DR. BETH HARRIS: In
the image of Dyer, there's an immediate
sense of death. There's an immediate sense
of the flesh disintegrating, with Bacon there's this
feeling of the flesh melting and being eaten away. In fact, in his
torso, that blackness that's that panel on the back,
seems to kind of move forward and kind of take over
the speaker's body. And at the same time, there's
something very transcendent about the phase. The eyes are closed, the
head tilts up slightly, as though there's a way that the
figure's somehow transcending the body as the body
is being consumed. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
So interesting that you say melting. We can see that
shadow that he seems to cast, almost as a
kind of pool of flesh to the lower right
in some terrible way. DR. BETH HARRIS: The pool
is pink and flesh colored, and the body itself is being
taken over by this black DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It's also
that it has a kind of dementia. It seems to be literally
seeping out of him. DR. BETH HARRIS: There's a
real tension between surface and an illusion of
depth to the body. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
The depicted space as opposed to the
conceptual space, that alternation becomes
a beautiful metaphor. The entire set of paintings
places these figures in a kind of isolation, in
a very spare, very abstract space. He's created this very
uncomfortable, very tense, kind of relationship. DR. BETH HARRIS:
On the other hand, both panels on either side,
although they are flat, they have some
sense of dimension by the diagonal line that's
in front of either one and yet in the central panel,
which is the most abstract, in terms of the
space, because they don't have that diagonal line. We can't locate depth at all. It's almost as though the
middle space, where those two figures are joined,
perhaps where he's rejoined with his lover in some
space beyond the physical, we had the most
abstracted space. Whereas in the two other
panels, as you've said, there's that conceptual,
transcendent, flat space that's in conflict, somehow with
the organic three-dimensional shapes of the figures. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
DR. BETH HARRIS: But I also read something else
into that diagonal on the right and left panels. Although these are
hung on a flat wall, these are hinged paintings,
and they actually come out at an angle
towards us slightly, referencing that bottom angle. DR. BETH HARRIS:
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: The way that a traditional
triptych would unfold. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: DR.
BETH HARRIS: Yes, exactly. There was tremendous
energy being expended in the brush strokes. I see it in the
composition, and I see it in the tension
between the figures, sexual or violent, or both. DR. BETH HARRIS:
Yeah, and you have in fact, that big, broad
white brush stroke. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Now
that's interesting, in another sense, because of
course, Bacon, although he's working in Britain, is
very much of the generation of the Abstract Expressionist. Bacon, quite distinctly, and
very much unlike the Americans, is maintaining the
privacy of the figure. DR. BETH HARRIS: These are very
hard-edged abstract shapes, yet one easily recalls
Abstract Expressionism. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
They're both responding to a similar kind of
existential issues that have to do with the
isolation of the figure, the meaning of the figure. DR. BETH HARRIS:
These paintings are difficult to
understand and to read. They take time to
sort of grapple with. On the other hand, still
having the presence of something that
one can recognize, especially the human figure,
does give us a handle. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
There's something really extraordinary
about taking the human figure, painting
it so beautifully, but then attacking
it, cutting into it, melting it away,
making it so grotesque. I think that's what makes
these paintings so tough. [MUSIC PLAYING]