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Description: francis bacon 1909-1992
Studies of the Human Body
Signed, titled and dated 1979 on the reverse of each panel
Oil on canvas
Triptych
each: 78 by 58 in. 198.1 by 147.3 cm.
Provenance: Marlborough Gallery Ltd., London; Acquired from the above on October 1, 1980
Exhibited: New York, Marlborough Gallery Inc., Francis Bacon, 1980; London, Tate Gallery, Francis Bacon, 1985, no. 107
Literature: Michel Leiris, Francis Bacon, Full Face and in Profile, New York, 1983, no. 123, illustrated; Michel Leiris, Francis Bacon, New York, 1987, no. 119, illustrated; Hugh Davies and Sally Yard, Bacon, New York, 1987, no. 82, illustrated pp. 82-83; David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, London, 1987, illustrated pp. 156-57
Francis Bacon, (exhibition catalogue), Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich, 1996-97, illustrated p. 47
"Actually Michelangelo and Muybridge are mixed up in my mind together, and so I perhaps could learn about positions from Muybridge and learn about the ampleness, the grandeur of form from Michelangelo, and it would be very
difficult for me to disentangle the influence of Muybridge and the influence of Michelangelo... I am sure that I have been influenced by the fact that Michelangelo made the most voluptuous nudes in the plastic arts." (Quoted in David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon, London, 1988, p. 115).
Executed in 1979, Triptych - Studies of the Human Body sees the confluence of two of Bacon's greatest inspirations, Eadweard Muybridge and Michelangelo in one of his most beautiful and erotically charged compositions. Through its slight ambiguity of content, this work teems with sexual energy and tension, born of Bacon's deep instinctual understanding of the painterly language which he so uniquely manipulated. Having spent most of the seventies gradually purifying his images and narrowing his focus, this work is a distinct development from works such as Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion, 1944 (Tate Gallery, London) and seems like the affirmation of a refined and mature style, in which vast blocks of joyous color hold court to brief, extraordinary bursts of painterly energy. In this sense these three meditations on the male nude form confront the viewer in a manner unique to the art of Francis Bacon: unnerving the viewer, challenging his or her sensibilities and perception, yet still declaring a masterful poise and precision.
Seemingly inspired by Matisse's Atelier rouge of 1911 Bacon has cast his performers on a huge blocked orange expanse, which fills all three panels, representing both the walls and floor of separated blank interiors. Against this calm and spare background, the players fidget and buzz with energy. The familiar nudes in the central panel are derived from Muybridge's sequential still depictions of naked wrestlers in motion, grappling for the upper hand (see fig. 2). Here, they have been transformed into two lovers locked in the ecstasy of sexual congress and virtually morphing into one as they
violently battle for each other's bodily affections. Backed onto a yawning void of darkness, the howling grimace on the face of one of the perpetrators bears witness to the struggle, the fully exposed ape-like teeth and the slash of blue next to the face are testament to his agitated movement.
Michelangelo's figures of Giorno (day) and Crepuscolo (Twilight) that face each other on the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici in the Medici chapel, Florence, are the direct inspiration for the two figures in the left and right hand panels (see figs. 3 and 4). Here these two toweringly masculine Guardians whose every muscle and sinew has been meticulously and inflexibly cast in stone, have been transferred from their imperious plinths and set onto the hard straight lines of makeshift surgical tables where they have been re-moulded as bold yet vulnerable objects of study. Bacon has referred to the 'voluptuousness' of Michelangelo's figures and here he has lovingly accentuated this feature, every rounded curve heightened, every ridge emphasized with a dash of pure Titanium white. Yet still these figures seem insecure and restless, their clean white garments serving only as if to underline the fact that they are samples for the viewer's gaze.
Bacon frames his figures as if in a spectacle: we are watching them and they seem to know it. They are cognizant of our attention, the left-hand figure turns away to bare the gash on his back whilst the right-hand figure turns toward us to flex his biceps. The triptych format seems to hint at a narrative between the panels, but that narrative remains ambiguous. The title is knowingly non-committal. Are the figures in the left and right panels the same as those in the central panel or are they merely guardians, or even voyeurs? Is this a before and after scenario, or a freeze frame? This is a classic device which Bacon used to revel in, allowing his imagination to run wild. In 1979, he stated "Triptychs are the thing I like doing most and I think this may be related to the thought I've sometimes had of making a film. I like the juxtaposition of the images separated on three different canvases. So far as my work has any quality, I often feel it is the triptychs that have the best quality." (Quoted in David Sylvester, Looking back at Francis Bacon, London, 2000, p. 232).
Triptych - Studies of the Human Body represents a grand tour through the great traditions of Art History, beginning with its most historic subject, the Nude and moving through the sculpted forms of Michelangelo, the obsessive recorded photography of Muybridge, the renowned Cubist device of fragmented perspective and the sublime stripes of Barnett Newman to arrive at an entirely individual and unique composition which questions the very nature of appearance, artistic or otherwise. Here the nature of the human form, which has been mediated through a number of representative media is adapted through Bacon's mind and hand to be at once amorphous, yet totally real. Through moments of magic, Bacon coagulates color and form to achieve a heightened sense of figurative reality, which leaves the viewer thrilling to the sensations of his subjects. This is nowhere more dramatic than in the present composition.