生命的阶梯 ——弗朗西斯•培根的艺术探索 The Ladder of Life-Francis Bacon's Artistic Exploration

Francis Bacon is a great artist. His glory has been shared all over the world, but we only know the tip of the iceberg about him. Francis Bacon, we need and continue to need to know him.

People admire Francis Bacon's art, which is interesting in itself. Is Bacon's birth the creative tension of art? Or are human beings addicted to living under different conditions? Or is "all childishness of God"?

Bacon itself is more like an art open to the world.

One — life goes deep into art.

Bacon's dependence on art is beyond the understanding of ordinary people, just like a drug addict's dependence on drugs. Art links his nerves, peddles his feelings, and exposes his sex and pleasure. Art is not only the necessary pass for bacon to mix in Soho, but also the experience process of his life existence. As he himself said: "I think modern people will play games for no reason because they know that they are accidental products and worthless individuals Look at the art now, they're all out and out games. I think that's how it is, and what's fascinating is that it's more and more difficult for artists because they have to really go deep into the game to achieve what they want. " Bacon, who has no religious belief, completely dedicates himself to nothingness and thoroughly penetrates his life into the game of art.

Bacon described his life as a huge mess: when he was expelled by middle-class families at the age of 16 because of disguise, and abandoned by his uncle in Berlin Hotel, he was completely reduced to the life of close men (or, perhaps more accurately, gay male prostitutes) and gamblers Bacon, after meeting Eric hall, was really serious about painting and broadened his artistic vision under Hall's guidance. Art is like bacon's straw!

The end of the two world wars forced human beings to find a new way out of exhaustion, secular life replaced the grand theme, and art returned to the individual theme. What dominates artistic creation is no longer lofty taste and ultimate sentiment, but a complete individual expression. First of all, Bacon's art relies on an instinct to expose emotional violence, distorted images and private life in his works and Salon Exhibition Hall. Bacon tears off the virtue mask of life and presents the weak nature of human nature.

Bacon is fortunate to be more than Oscar Wilde, who can release himself without grace and grace. Bacon's art and legend are closely linked to his two same-sex lovers, one of whom is a bloody pilot (and a full alcoholic), and a burglar who is running in the east end of London. These people who were rejected by the secular world are not only the characters in Bacon's life, but also his art source. At the 1962 Tete painting exhibition in London, where bacon art achieved key achievements, his lover Peter Lessey committed suicide in the Mediterranean the same day; at the 1971 Paris Review exhibition, his lover George Dale committed suicide on the night before the exhibition opened. Bacon's unprecedented depravity and indulgence is the true portrait of the post-war Europeans. 

He indulges in the bloody obsession on the canvas, the nature of violence, the cruelty of life and the limit of challenging ethics, which is exactly the pain and excitement of modern people. No perfect civilization will be found in any historical period, nor is man a pure virtue slave. Only by expanding moral standards can human beings exist.There is no doubt that each of us has a mysterious impulse to tear ourselves apart, but most of us can only taste the joy of bloodthirsty quietly through great creation and other people's lives. As bacon himself very clear "about the tragic experience of love and disease, after all, is not liked by people, they prefer to be nothing at the side of the crowd." Bacon lived a chaotic and wrong life all his life. He did not hesitate to use himself as a material, and achieved bold practice of art in the excitement of repeated trials and pleasures.

Two—Art goes deep into human nature

Starting from Bacon's signature work "three character exercises based on the crucifixion map", he made a decision to use this as the middle line to express the tragedy of human nature with a half human and half animal monster. As a kind of preaching story, the traditional theme of "nailing" is full of the lofty sense of sacrifice for human beings in the works of artists in the past. "It protects your feelings and moods like armor" (bacon language). Human beings commit themselves to a world of ideas to escape the cruel reality and personal distress. Bacon said that "crucifixion" was an atrocity of human beings. He put up the cross, on which the flesh, blood and beast were hanging naked, clearing the religious significance. At the same time, Bacon's works stimulated the nerves of human beings, hiding the deep uneasiness of fate.

Modern people are faced with an enigmatic paradox: on the one hand, the collapse of idealism, religion and super-morality, and the end of nihilism. Obviously bacon would not be a prophet, a saint, a prophet, nor would he actively create decorative anesthetics for the purpose of self deception. He is more and more firmly addicted to capture the mysterious nature of the characters around him, the indecent state of sitting on the toilet, the deformed face during the lavatory, the bloody naked syringe, the mean of male intercourse Bacon refreshes everything, liberates himself from instinct, does not improve morality, and beautifies his desire On the stage of civilization, which is enveloped with the atmosphere of purification, Bacon's art goes deep into the essence of human beings.

Since the 1960s, bacon has been more and more inclined to paint portraits. He thinks that art is the infatuation of life, and what human beings are infatuated with most is themselves. His portraits mostly depict the people around him, although they are always different from their own appearance. Who can face up to these portraits with ease? They look terrible, lustful, impulsive, and in a sense of fleeting at any time. Standing in front of these portraits with glass frames and reflecting their own figures, no one wants to indulge in them, but it tends to be more real, definite and lasting than any beautiful appearance.

Bacon doesn't care whether the society is happy or not. He only thinks that art is immortal. In his life, he is greedy for food, wine, favorite people and exciting things, which is also confirmed in his paintings. His most exciting and profound production of beauty is authenticity, which is the highest beauty. Just imagine the panic, discomfort and interest caused by Bacon's rude but bright and magnanimous behavior. Bacon's paintings are placed beside us. It's like the moment when we see our own monsters. Should we be ashamed, angry and angry for the secret? Or struggling hard at the moment of being on the verge of beast? Bacon, let's think: man, this ridiculous, ridiculous and unfortunate animal, how to treat life at the intersection of nihilism?

Three—The exploration of stick paper pasting in oil painting

In 1962, David Silvestre asked in an interview with Francis Bacon, "you never sketch or sketch, you never rehearse the picture?" Bacon replied, "I often feel like I should, but I don't. For my way of painting, this method has little effect. Texture, hue, and the way pigments move all have unexpected results. As a result, any sketch drawn in advance can only become a skeleton like thing. " This was once regarded as an important reason to deny Bacon's drawing, but in fact, the information we can read from Bacon's answer is more complex: first, he seldom used the way of pre drawing for his painting style (mainly oil painting) at that time, because for bacon, the kind of thing he called "opportunity" in oil painting is very important; second, he may prefer drawing as an independent way Li's works exist, not just for "skeleton like" things.

As to whether Francis Bacon drew sketches or not, art historian Edward Lucy Smith, in his research and later a large number of Bacon's collection of sketches, has given the answer that need not be doubted. Among them, Barry Joel's sketch collection really looks like the methodology behind Bacon's famous shaped oil painting works.

Surprisingly, a group of oil paintings pasted with stick paper in Bacon's later years showed another independent and self-sufficient exploration momentum. Compared with oil paintings, ordinary people have a hard to put down attitude towards sketch, oil painting stick toner, clip art and other material works. But artists don't seem to think so! Bacon once said: "when you talk about Edgar, don't forget that his best work is pastel." Moreover, bacon mentioned in his analysis of the images in Edgar's pastels that "Edgar always runs through his body with lines" and "after that, he will add a lot of colors between the lines." He thinks that in this way, the authenticity of the image is strengthened, and the authenticity is presented in many ways; the intensity is also put into the color of the body to prop up.

There is no doubt that Bacon tried to draw the head image by using this method in his later creation to get more sharp and real images. Bacon chooses oil painting stick, draws the eyes of characters with sharp circles, screams with the curves of practice, and fills lines with rich colors like the sunrise of Monet. If Bacon's oil painting is releasing reality with the aid of "machine transport" and non image distortion, then his paintings are less accidental and more planned.

Bacon has long said that Rembrandt's control of irrational signs to create images is to do all the work of abstract expressionism. For example, Rembrandt's self portrait is non image, because there is no eye socket. And Rembrandt also records the truth, which is more exciting and profound for bacon. At the same time, bacon also said that the nature of painting is binary in his view. The reason why he is not interested in abstract painting is that abstract painting is purely aesthetic, and the beauty of patterns and shapes in abstract painting is the attraction. Combined with Bacon's early thinking about painting, and looking at his oil painting stick works, we can't help but find that he is doing the experiment of recording reality with the most attractive abstract patterns and shapes. " Great art is born in ingenious planning. (Bacon)

We even have reason to believe that he chose collage in order to surpass his achievements. If it's just another kind of material experiment, he can completely complete the whole image with an oil painting stick. Bacon's oil paintings have a very significant feature that the background is unified and clear. Bacon said that probably because he didn't like the family atmosphere, he liked the intimacy of putting the image on the cold and hard background, isolating the image and keeping it away from the room and family, so that the image could express itself. Then, compared with the flat background, it seems more isolated and decisive to cut down the image and paste it on the color card paper.

Bacon also pursued a kind of structural painting, so he gave up his plan to make sculpture. In an interview with David silverwell in 1973, he mentioned finding a way to make the image of a painting better than sculpture. It has not been put into practice, but they are thought in a sculpture way. He also described it as "a structural painting, with images floating out of the river of the body." What is the shape of that? "It has been determined that they will rise from a structure."... "

Of course, we have no way to judge that the structural painting in his words refers to the stick paper collage of these oil paintings. However, from Bacon's love of Picasso's Cubism and his criticism of Matisse's color paper collage as too decorative and lyrical, it is easy to make it clear that bacon had made careful thinking in many aspects before he created oil painting stick paper collage.

Bacon himself said, "I like formal art. Really, from this point of view, maybe the older I get, the more I want more free and formal works. That's another problem. " Just as art historian Edward Lucy Smith believes that Bacon's sketches in his later years are all ambitious works, I tend to think that Bacon's stick and paper collage of oil paintings is a way to solve the problem of "freer and more in line with the form", and a deep exploration of bacon beyond himself.

Epilogue

The bold attempt of art is often the touchstone of legalization of human desire or dirty habit, which is the moral root of the suppression of great art works. But this does not prevent them from being popular, because people themselves have a desire for destruction and degradation. Francis Bacon's art of impact is the product of his suffering in the journey of God's thoughts and nihility. He is the liberated man who finds a solid ladder of life by art.