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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.
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