This exhibition presents
the work of two Twentieth century
painters of the human body, Francis Bacon (1909 – 1992) and Maria Lassnig (1919
– 2014).
Maria Lassnig
Lassnig was born Austria
in 1919 and subsequently lived in Paris in the 1960s and New York in the 1970s.
Her work is presented in the gallery before Bacon’s work and the notes below
discuss the work in the order that it is presented.
Her work is concerned with
the creation of visual images of how it feels to live in a body (rather than
how the body is perceived visually). She was driven by the idea that the
boundary between the body and the outside world is porous and shifting. This
she termed her theory of Körpergefühl or body sensation. She used her own body
as the recurring theme in her paintings, often conflated with some other item,
depending on the particular experience she was expressing.
Although her work obviously
develops over the 50 or so years that are included in this exhibition, I found
it all to be characterised by strong and definite choice and use of colour and
by very confident brushwork.
For example, the paintings
in the “Figurations” section of the exhibition (1960s) are large works, painted
with a limited palette including a lot of layers of white, overpainted with vivid
blue and red, which I took to indicate hot and cold. These paintings, called
Strichbilder or line paintings, were painted whilst kneeling or lying on the
canvas – in other words, she was “experiencing” the canvas as well as using it
as a support. There is a lot of control of the line in these paintings.
In the Kitchen/War section
(1990s), the self portrait merges with an object, a theme she continued in the
films she made in New York. The object may represent female subjugation or war
– guns (phallic), kitchen objects (female), the awareness of a chair pressing
into the body. These works are more disturbing than the earlier work and the mouths
and teeth are exaggerated - the open mouth is a recurring and disturbing theme
in her work. These works show much looser lines and use more vibrant colours than
the “Figurations”, but there is still strong use of line - the boundaries of
the objects are represented by lines of different colours. The colours of this series presented to me as
“angry” and “peaceful”.
The Body Housing (1950s)
and “Inside and Outside the Canvas” (1980s) sections again show a contrast of
colour. The Body Housing works are abstract portraits which embrace cubism and
are dynamic, spiralling and layered, with lots of movement. They are painted on
jute in earth tones; muted tones, greens, olive. By contrast, the “Inside & outside the
canvas” series uses bright colours, particularly complimentary colours, e.g. green/pink,
colours. Again, there are very dynamic, textured brush strokes, rendering the
works almost abstract. In this series, Lassnig depicts herself emerging from or
reclining on the canvas and they have a resonance with the Figurations works in
her use of the canvas plane.
The Science Fiction
(1990s) series deals with the rise of technology and Lassnig’s body
merges with technical
objects, in a similar way to the Kitchen/War series. Again there are vibrant
colours, but this time grotesque faces, again with the open mouths. The theme
of the face or body against a strong background recurs. Once can detect the
influence of Picasso.
Lassnig moved to New York
in 1968 and adopted a more figurative style which she described (presumably
humourously) as “American Realism” (moves to NY). She left behind the abstraction
of Body Housing and Figurations and adopted a more muted palette with a lot of
green hues. These works often form a painting within a painting, merging the
actual painting with her experience of painting it. This is also a comment on
what she saw as the false art of photography. Some of the paintings mourn her
mother, whose dead body is depicted within the image. She also made films as
part of Women/Artist/Filmmakers Inc in 1970s New York, investigating themes of
feminism and technology, again recurring themes in her work.
 |
| Maria Lassnig, "Hospital", 2005 |
Later in life her
“Körpergefühl” took on new significance by addressing frailty and death. In her
eighties, she painted herself on crutches, which I compared to the guns of
Kitchen/war, and in hospital. Her depictions of the physical body shows its
ageing, for example drooped, bony shoulders. The open mouth takes on new
significance – gasping for breath, gasping for life – in “Hospital”, a
painting showing multiple selves. This was probably the most disturbing image
in the whole exhibition. It really captured the despair and fear of the dying
person. The strong lines and the white background refer back to the Figurations
paintings of the 1960s. Her continuing use of the open mouth to depict
sexuality, shock, dying, is a very clever device.
I found a lot of resonance
in Lassnig’s depiction of the physical sensation as lived experience. It spoke
to me of my own efforts to depict the embodied experience of any moment,
although I am currently moving this forward in abstract terms, rather than
figurative as Lassnig did. Her use of herself as subject matter also
corresponds to my use of my own image in a lot of my work, and validates that
choice for me.
Her use of herself merging
with an object or place to convey the “oneness” of the experience was not
something I’d particularly considered but I wonder if it might open up the idea
of semi-figurative/ semi-abstract works in future. Something to think about.
What am I expressing? How am I expressing it? Can I better depict my awareness
of my surroundings by depicting the merging of my body and the place it’s in ?
Francis Bacon
Bacon was born in Ireland
and moved to London in 1926. He travelled to Berlin and Paris before returning
to London. His portraits use grotesque features and “space-frames” to stage his subjects in space and to express
the subject’s experience – so recalling Lassnig’s encounters with spaces that
I’d just seen. The space-frames also help Bacon to control not only the subject
of his painting, but also its relationship with the viewer. Bacon was also
evidently influenced by Picasso and he
set out to make paintings in which “the paint comes across directly onto the
nervous system”.
The exhibition starts with
“Crucifixion”, which depicts the crucifixion of Jesus as a brutal act from the
viewpoint of this atheist artist. Bizarrely, in this dimly-lit initial part of
the exhibition, people were conversing in hushed voices, as one might in a
church. This work is joined by “Three
Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion”, a take on the tradition of
the triptych, in which grotesque phallic snake-like heads appear to writhe
against a background of orange. I took this to indicate hell. The figures seem
almost like they are made from metal, and their mouths are open, as in
Lassnig’s works.. In contrast to this, some of Bacon’s use of line reminded me
of charcoal; there was a sketchy, feathery quality which I hadn’t expected to
find.
Further works reveal
screaming figures in dark rooms, framed by Bacon’s architectural devices within
his canvas. Bacon knew the primal instinct of the scream. Dark textiles,
fabrics, rugs, appear, sumptuous and tactile and richly painted next to the
screaming subject. He holds both the subject and the viewer trapped together in
the scream of desire or fear and in the device of the canvas entrapping the
viewer as she seeks to understand what it means.
The “cage” device gives
depth to the canvas and in some cases the troubled, grotesque figure is barely
visible. In the 1950s Bacon sought to portray the fraught human condition of
the post-war years. These dark portraits, in all senses of the word, depict
isolation and anxiety, associated with Bacon’s homosexuality, then still
illegal. In some cases the face of the subject is barely visible, implying that
he is hidden, or perhaps universal – I guess there were as many gays in those
days as there are now. He also used paintings to comment on the Pope,
presumably driven by his atheist view stemming from a Catholic upbringing.
The exhibition divides
into two, and the works suddenly become more colourful and more overtly
voyeuristic. In the 1960s. the grotesque, mutilated bodies reappeared, but now
in brightly coloured spaces which are taken to be rooms. There are multiple
bodies, but they are cordoned off within by cubic frames. The open mouths are still there, and there is
still a charcoal-like or feathery quality to the work, but the colours are a
departure from the previous darker works. A move to the swinging sixties,
swinging in all senses of the word, perhaps? Possibly also a comment on the
improved living conditions now possible after the war.
In the 1970s and 1980s,
Bacon began to use devices such as mirroring and lenses within his paintings,
such as in “Three Figures and Portrait”. He also included his own (distorted) portrait
within some of them, again in common with Lassnig. The spatial plane becomes
confused, trying to evoke a powerful response from the viewer. There is always some distortion and division
within the canvas, controlling and entrapping the subject.
 |
| Francis Bacon, "Sand Dune", 1983 |
In the 1980s, the
distorted bodies became even more abstract and again seemed almost metallic,
like the earlier “Three studies for figures at the base of a crucifixion”, and
again the bright background is reminiscent of that triptych. The body seems to
almost flow out of its entrapping cube, as if Bacon is finally relinquishing
his control.
The most fascinating part
of this exhibition was the divider between the two parts, which looked at
Bacon’s working method. He evidently denied making preparatory sketches, but
after his death this was found to be untrue. The exhibition shows pages from
books with photographs overpainted with the cube device. Some of these even
include his own works. There are lots of notes scribbled everywhere – in the
front of books, in margins, lots of ideas being generated. There are also test
sketches which reproduce figures from the photographs – e.g boxers – entrapped
within the cube device. I was really taken by this. Here is one of the most
famous artists of the 20th century sketching and noting. It had
never occurred to me that great artists would work in such a fashion, testing
ideas directly into photographs that took their fancy, and scribbling notes
into the endpapers of books. As an artist, I could feel a connection with this
approach, and it validated some of the times when I’ve agonised over sketches
and tests when trying to develop a resolved piece. It also validated my
approach of endless notes to self and ideas in different books. I made a note
in my exhibition notebook : “don’t be afraid to doodle/sketch”!
I found Bacon’s work quite
overwhelming and really need to read up more about him, thought time has not
yet permitted. What can I learn from him? Both artists showed disfigured
bodies, self portraits and influence of violence, but Bacon’s is less instantly
accessible to me than Lassnig’s, and yet there is a fascination within it.
No comments:
Post a Comment