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BACON |
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Triptychs |
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![]() Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion 1944 |
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The reference to the Crucifixion theme
is only oblique—three figures, the idea of mutilated bodies. The bulbous forms bear a certain similarity to the monsters in some Surrealist canvases, a movement with which Bacon's work had some early affinity. More than four decades later, the artist painted a second version of this composition. |
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![]() Second Version of "Triptych 1944" 1988 |
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Bacon here
returns to one of his signature images, painting a second version of the Crucifixion that in 1944 had established the format of the triptych in his work. The blind, bulbous figures are essentially the same, two having appendages that end in open mouths. What is different is the space in which they are placed, especially in the central panel, and the treatment of color, now darkly contrasting and more solemn, even elegiac. |
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![]() Three Studies for a Crucifixion 1962 |
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Almost twenty years after Three Studies for Figures at the
Base of a Crucifixion, Bacon returned to its evocation of sacramental slaughter and to its triadic structure. The panel to the right represents an animal's carcass slit open, but its form was suggested by a thirteenth-century Crucifixion by Cimabue, when seen upside down. |
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![]() Triptych, August 1972 1972 |
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The three panels create
a space subtly disturbed in its symmetry: there is a door in each panel, but of different size; and the scenes in the side panels are turned at slightly different angles with respect to the plane of the central canvas. The contrast between the bare, antiseptic setting and the mutilated figures produces an intensely dramatic effect with great sobriety of means. |
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![]() Triptych, May-June 1973 1973 |
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In this triptych the
painter alludes to the circumstances of the suicide two years earlier of his friend George Dyer with horrifying precision. Yet the solemn harmony of purple and black lends the composition an unexpected ceremonial dignity. |
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![]() Triptych, March 1974 1974 |
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The figure in the
central panel derives, once again, from Muybridge's photographs. The figures on the side panels open and close the composition: one, facing away, looks into the canvas, while the other— the photographer who seems to direct his camera lens toward the viewer— looks out from it. Both clothed figures contrast with the nude figure in the center panel and reinforce the immediacy of its presence. |
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![]() Three figures in a room |
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![]() Triptych Inspired by T. S. Eliot's Poem "Sweeney Agonistes," 1967 |
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Bacon refers to the line from
Eliot's poem that summarizes life as "birth, and copulation, and death," the three acts—according to some interpreters—to which the three panels refer. The joined pairs on their platforms, right and left, derive from the photographs of naked wrestlers taken by Eadweard Muybridge. |
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![]() Three Studies for a Portrait |
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![]() Three Studies for a Portrait of John Edwards |
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![]() Three Studies of Muriel Belcher |
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![]() Three Studies of the Male Back 1970 |
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The different positions
of the mirror offer a paradoxical sequence, whose aim is to disturb and question the relationship of the viewer to the painting. The high, diagonal point of view, as in an architect's axonometric drawing, accentuates the idea of the individual surprised in his privacy. |
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![]() Triptych |
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![]() Triptych 1976 |
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These apparently arbitrary collections of images and diverse objects bear some resemblance to the dream logic of Surrealism, although they all in fact belong to Bacon's established repertoire: nude figures in tension, skeletal anatomies attacked by birds of prey, and so on. Everything seems to converge on the bloody ceremony depicted in the central panel, a ritual that the portrait busts on the side panels attend indifferently, like sphinxes—the guardians of a secret. |
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![]() Studies of the Human Body 1970 |
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Muybridge's
photographic studies reappear as a source of inspiration, producing images of the human body in positions awkward and tense to the point of becoming unrecognizable. The figure's precarious balancing act on the elevated bar increases the tension. |
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![]() Studies from the Human Body |
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