The Crisis of Light: Francis Bacon’s Destruction of Myth

 by Hamish Critchley

In his poem ‘La Chambre En Haut Du Cri’, Yves Peyre describes Bacon's work as ‘La crise de lumière’ - ‘the crisis of light’. Bacon's work subverts the traditional comforts and beauties associated with light: He depicts twisted beasts and distorted people. Bacon's work, in its dark meaning and bloody symbolism, sets the room alight so brightly your head by instinct turns away. An unrelenting, penetrating blaze - tearing apart what we think about ourselves and setting fire to myth. ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’ is his brightest work in this sense. 

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944)

The work reveals the world beneath convention. The first reaction to the three disturbing figures depicted in each panel is repulsion. They aren't quite any animal in known existence - but there is something beastly in their appearance, eel-like necks and wing-like definitions. This attribute is made more sickening by their human features - hair, ears, and seething mouths. Bacon shows his viewers their true status: humanity as beasts, a monstrosity. The work’s title links the animalistic triptych to the biblical execution of Christ. Bacon said the three figures in his work represent the Furies - the three Greek Goddesses of Vengeance. The Virgin Mary is commonly depicted at the base of the crucifixion suggesting the work could invert Mary's traditional innocence, suggesting she is haunted by revenge. The combining of the Pagan and Christian, reinforced by the traditionally biblical triptych form, suggests a transience to belief whilst also conveying a steadfastness to emotion and art. The dichotomy reinforces the human tendency to mythologize our emotions and devotions - often on contradictory terms. 

I don't think I'm going to be able to look at the colour orange the same again. Bacon subverts the usually positive connotations of the colour, transforming it into something confronting and assaulting. The orange conflicts and reinforces the grey-whiteness of the figures - both colours fighting for attention over the other and creating an unnerving tension in the painting. ‘The Base of a Crucifixion’ was painted in 1944 whilst the Second World War was coming to an end and everyone had the same tense grief that pervades the triptych. Bacon illustrates what was left in the world after the destruction of the war - death, savage misery, and primal conflict. The war was a catalyst for Bacon's ability to overcome reality and convention, to slip under the surface and into the Underworld of our beastly emotion. His painting portrays convention as absurd - the myths made as fragile and transient - illuminating the world of trauma present underneath. 

Triptych (1976)

Bacon was heavily inspired by literature. Triptych (1976)  is a combination of his influence from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Leiris’s Frêle bruit, and Aeschylus’s Prometheus Unbound. The two portraits either side are strangely elongated depictions of Leiris and Kurtz, the anti-hero of Conrad's novel. They employ some form of mental collage as the portraits morph into the figures and objects lying at the foot of the frame. The two sickly green figures produce a corpse-like image, the entities within float in grim, sage green and create an unsettling painting. The middle panel depicts Prometheus' perpetual torture by the great eagle - moving so quickly it becomes all but a blur of black wings and yellow beak. The titan is painted on the back cover of something reminiscent of a book - but the eagle transcends the limitations of the novel's border, implying the suffering Prometheus is not just a theme of the book, but an attribute of the human condition. At the bottom of each panel lies text on paper - reinforcing the literary influence, which he continues as he focuses on Aeschylus’s play Oresteia.

Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus (1981)

In Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus (1981) he further mirrors human and myth. The first thing to strike the viewer in the triptych is the blood red banner of the centre piece, recycled in Second Version of Triptych 1944 (1988), the colour  immediately evokes images of death and pain, commanding attention and highlights the figure standing within it - causing that familiar uncomfort. It also makes apparent that the left and right panels mirror each other - the red banner acts as the line of reflection - as the doors and irregular lines are mirrored. Aeschylus’ Oresteia is an ancient tragedy of revenge and justice - featuring the aforementioned Furies, one of which appears once more in the left panel. The mirror divides reality and the metaphorical: humanity and their myths. The Erinye is an allegory of the running man of the left panel. Presumably driven by revenge, his outline definition is blurred compared to the other two figures.  whilst his shadow shares the same pink-purples of his flesh - emphasising his motion, whilst simultaneously mirroring the blood that the Fury is drawn to on the left panel. The bird-like appearance of the Erinye, seen through the curve of the beak and wing-like appendages, suggests a sense of constriction. Birds are typically associated with freedom, but as the bird is contained within the outlined shape - which we can deduce is a symbol of revenge as the blood evaporates at the end of the shape - it presents vengeance as constraining, subverting the myth attached to birds. Death lies at the centre of the triptych - highlighted by the red, and reusing the form of Prometheus from 1976 - disturbingly, however, the figure is headless. It presents the figure as unidentifiable which contradicts the status it is given via its placement upon the pedestal. This conflict ironically presents a sense of unity; as death is unifying, the figure's lack of identity suggests unanimity and the platform reflects the universal respect of death and the dead. Human connection is continued through the use of a modern setting - its bland beige colours amplifies the fleshy colours of the figures - and contradicts the ancient tragedy. However, Bacon intends to modernise the sentiments and reactions of the play in order to present the mythological creatures as allegories for primal human emotion. He suggests this allegory of desperation, grief, and vengeance to be a unifying human attribute. Which is why he paints the viewer's perspective of the triptych - revealed via the platform lines of perspective - as slightly skewed to the mythological side. Bacon is aware of art's status as myth, and encourages the viewer to connect art to myth, and realise how much of humanity belongs to the realm of the mythological.

Excerpt from Second Version of Triptych 1944 (1988)