YOU ENOCH

Francis Bacon, “Two Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer,” 1968.

Francis Bacon, “Triptych — In Memory of George Dyer,” 1971.

Francis Bacon, “Study after Velazquez,” 1950.

These images accompany a myopic summation of Bacon’s work in Friday’s (May 21, 2009) New York Times by Roberta Smith, a review of “Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective” now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).  Smith’s review  dwells on the individual brush strokes, the technique, the time-line, without acknowledging the raw, visceral physicality of Bacon’s images from the triptych “Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion” from ca. 1944 to his late works.  Bacon’s work is a return to the religious in painting; yet that is not to say the spiritual.  Bacon paints religion’s vacated shell from the post-WWII era to the present.  He does not simply find the clotheshorses of sacrament and ceremony to trot out in his canvases, rather he creates a reinvigorated humanism that acknowledges and embodies horror, passion, desire, cruelty, violence, and wonder. It is a visioning of life after the godhead has broken asunder; it is a visioning that still finds from the ruins a  sort of transcendence however tragic.

{Source: Above Images from NYTimes, “If Paintings Had Voices, Francis Bacon’s Would Shriek,” a review of “Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective” now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Roberta Smith}

More Francis Bacon on (YOU) ENOCH: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 & his page at the Tate Modern