Junk for Code

Deleuze on Bacon

Gilles Deleuze on Francis Bacon in The Logic of Sensation:

"Bacon thus pursues a very pecular project as a portrait painter: to dismantle the face, to rediscover the head or make it emerge from beneath the face."pp.20-21.

Francis Bacon, Painting (head of man),1950

Deleuze says:

"The bone belongs to the face, not the head. According to Bacon, there is no death's head. The head is deboned rather than bony, yet it is not at all soft, but firm. The head is of flesh, and the mask itself is not a death mask, it is a block of firm flesh that has ben separated from the bone: hence the studies for a portrait of William Blake." (p.25)

Francis Bacon, Study for a Portrait, After the life mask of William Blake, 1955

The relationship is one of head and meat.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 7, 2005 06:57 PM | TrackBack