Francis Bacon’s (1909-92) obsession with the beastial, primal aspect of humanity is at the core of his paintings currently showing at the Royal Academy of the Arts, London.
“I want to nail down reality so that it can be returned onto the nervous system more violently”.
Francis Bacon
As an openly gay man when homosexuality was illegal, and cast out by his father at the age of just 16, much of Bacon’s work reflects feelings of anger, pain, anxiety and instinct. Upon walking into a sombre inky black room at the RA, the first of a series of dimly-lit galleries containing Bacon’s paintings, these themes are immediately clear, including the cruelty of life, movement and the body.
As a former interior and furniture designer, it is interesting to note the backgrounds of the paintings above. The room in which the figure slumps suggests an opulent space that creates a striking juxtaposition with the dreary clothes and ghoulish skin. Blank picture frames often appear behind the subjects, as well as other ‘trapping’ devices – in this case an umbrella in Figure Study II – that further serve to pin the subjects in position and add a further dimension on unease for the viewer.
In many of his paintings, architectural lines are used to suggest the outline of a room as a blank box, often smaller than it would be in reality. Again this device emphasises entrapment and suffocation, as well as lending a subtle architectural quality to his work.
For me, this technique is a great example of the power of suggestion by omission – the ‘room’ becoming all the more oppressive for the lack of real dimension and walls that blur in and out of the painting’s surrounding background colour.