Lot Essay
This painting belongs to a remarkable series of reclining or lying figures that Bacon painted between 1959 and 1961. This series illustrates a widening of Bacon's talents and a new departure in his art. It also represents Bacon's first explorations of many of the themes and issues concerning the human figure that were to characterise his art for the rest of his life.
Bacon began in 1959 to experiment with the placement of the figure in a more recognisable "real space". The first device that he settled on that allowed him to do this was that of the couch which makes its first appearance in this series of works. Bacon was concerned that in his previous figure studies and portraits, the figure always "sits still and does nothing". He now wanted to capture the behaviour and the movement of a person. Indeed he has said that he was "more interested in what is called "behaviour" and "life" than in art.
Employing the couch permitted Bacon to experiment with twisted, contorted figures that in turn allowed for a greater expression of man's behavioral nature. The apparent realism of the couch also created a stronger sense of the "facticity" of the figure. Now presented in more familiar and believable space, Bacon's figures took on a startling materiality.
The figure appears on the couch like a slab of meat. In this work particularly, the warm hues of the body are deliberately set against the cool blue and green tones of the surrounding space in a way that emphasises that this figure has a temperature and a life of its own. The extended upright leg piercing the emptiness of the blue also reinforces this existential sense of life in the midst of empty space while at the same time mimicking a joint of meat from a butchers' shop.
The ambiguous associations that the pose of this figure was evidently of great importance for Bacon for in at least four different versions he repeats this pose exactly, experimenting only with contrasting backgrounds. Indeed, in the sister painting to this work, Reclining Woman now in the Tate Gallery, London, the figure is painted on a separate piece of canvas which has actually been stuck onto the background canvas. This suggests that, in this instance, Bacon was testing the figure against a series of backgrounds.
As has often been pointed out, Edward Muybridge's famous photographic studies of the body in motion formed an important visual aid for Bacon in his studies of the human figure. It was predominantly the notion that behavioural motion was what distinguished not only the animate from the inanimate but one human being from another, that interested Bacon and formed the basis of his portraiture and his distortive style.
It is only the present work and the female version in the Tate that are fully successful. In particular, it is Bacon's treatment of the head that illustrates this. The sweeping blue lines that have here been used, suggest a twisted motion of the figure and a restlessness that, unlike the other paintings, renders this extraordinary and dramatic pose more believable.
The drama of this pose with its uncomfortably twisted right leg, its splayed-out right arm and its "in-your-face" exposure of the genitals was evidently one that fascinated Bacon. But for the extended vertical right leg, it is this exact pose that he reworks several times in his famous Lying Figure with Syringe series of 1963. In this series Bacon added a syringe to the arm as a way of visually "nailing....the flesh onto the bed" and rendering the arm "dead weight". This "nailing" of "dead weight" ultimately led Bacon back to the Crucifixion theme that he had first used in 1944. In the great Crucifixion triptychs of 1962 and 1965 the reclining figures deliberately parallel the "strung up" corpses in a way that emphasises the artist's existential world view.
In 1962 Bacon observed, "I think that man now realises that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being, that he has to play the game out without reason." He has also said, "Painting makes me more aware of behaviour and it is easier for me to say what I want to say about behaviour with the methods of art than it is for me to say them in conversation." Reclining Figure is a particularly powerful example of Bacon's view of man as a living and behavioural carcass.
Bacon began in 1959 to experiment with the placement of the figure in a more recognisable "real space". The first device that he settled on that allowed him to do this was that of the couch which makes its first appearance in this series of works. Bacon was concerned that in his previous figure studies and portraits, the figure always "sits still and does nothing". He now wanted to capture the behaviour and the movement of a person. Indeed he has said that he was "more interested in what is called "behaviour" and "life" than in art.
Employing the couch permitted Bacon to experiment with twisted, contorted figures that in turn allowed for a greater expression of man's behavioral nature. The apparent realism of the couch also created a stronger sense of the "facticity" of the figure. Now presented in more familiar and believable space, Bacon's figures took on a startling materiality.
The figure appears on the couch like a slab of meat. In this work particularly, the warm hues of the body are deliberately set against the cool blue and green tones of the surrounding space in a way that emphasises that this figure has a temperature and a life of its own. The extended upright leg piercing the emptiness of the blue also reinforces this existential sense of life in the midst of empty space while at the same time mimicking a joint of meat from a butchers' shop.
The ambiguous associations that the pose of this figure was evidently of great importance for Bacon for in at least four different versions he repeats this pose exactly, experimenting only with contrasting backgrounds. Indeed, in the sister painting to this work, Reclining Woman now in the Tate Gallery, London, the figure is painted on a separate piece of canvas which has actually been stuck onto the background canvas. This suggests that, in this instance, Bacon was testing the figure against a series of backgrounds.
As has often been pointed out, Edward Muybridge's famous photographic studies of the body in motion formed an important visual aid for Bacon in his studies of the human figure. It was predominantly the notion that behavioural motion was what distinguished not only the animate from the inanimate but one human being from another, that interested Bacon and formed the basis of his portraiture and his distortive style.
It is only the present work and the female version in the Tate that are fully successful. In particular, it is Bacon's treatment of the head that illustrates this. The sweeping blue lines that have here been used, suggest a twisted motion of the figure and a restlessness that, unlike the other paintings, renders this extraordinary and dramatic pose more believable.
The drama of this pose with its uncomfortably twisted right leg, its splayed-out right arm and its "in-your-face" exposure of the genitals was evidently one that fascinated Bacon. But for the extended vertical right leg, it is this exact pose that he reworks several times in his famous Lying Figure with Syringe series of 1963. In this series Bacon added a syringe to the arm as a way of visually "nailing....the flesh onto the bed" and rendering the arm "dead weight". This "nailing" of "dead weight" ultimately led Bacon back to the Crucifixion theme that he had first used in 1944. In the great Crucifixion triptychs of 1962 and 1965 the reclining figures deliberately parallel the "strung up" corpses in a way that emphasises the artist's existential world view.
In 1962 Bacon observed, "I think that man now realises that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being, that he has to play the game out without reason." He has also said, "Painting makes me more aware of behaviour and it is easier for me to say what I want to say about behaviour with the methods of art than it is for me to say them in conversation." Reclining Figure is a particularly powerful example of Bacon's view of man as a living and behavioural carcass.