Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (Dublin 1909 - Madrid 1992) is one of the most famous painters from the 20th century. His works, ruthless and tormented, violently express the existential condition of human beings in the post-war age.

A man with a complex, somewhat disturbed personality, with an artistic interest for illnesses and mutilation - images of deformed or mutilated children were found in his studio; Francis Bacon is the pioneer of a more existential interpretation of surrealism, with the ambition to artistically investigate the true essence of contemporary man, torn apart by the Second World War but above all besieged after the war. The artist's inner world and personal emotional turbulence evolved into a magnificent obsession for the human essence, which led him to push the subjects of his painting to the extreme. Bacon's characters are at times minimalistic, at times deformed, disfigured. In one of his earliest works, Crucifixion (1933), the body of Christ is reduced to an essential shape on a dark background,

The work that launched Bacon's reputation and anticipated his taste for biomorphism is Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), which made a sensation and established Bacon as one of the foremost post-war artists. His successive works often follow the triptych format and theme of cruxifition or violent death.

Another recurring theme is the revisitation of Velázquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X... in a much, much darker tone.

Arguably his most famous painting, Francis Bacon's Figure with Meat (also known as Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef), is also a depiction of the pope sitting, this time flanked by two sides of raw animal carcasses. It's a haunting image that perfectly embodies the nihilism of the postwar era. The painting become particularly popular in recent years after it made an appearance in Tim Burton's Batman movie (1989), in a scene where the Joker himself praises the artwork by preventing his henchman from slashing it with a knife. "I kind of like this one, Bob. Leave it."

 

Commenti

Posta un commento

Post popolari in questo blog

Vania Zouriavliov

Immagine
Russia is definitely the most prolific country of Fucked Up Artists after Japan. And if  Uno Moralez ’s random pixel art can be considered the equivalent of Japanese  ero guro nansensu  (“nonsensical erotic gore”),  Vania Zouravliov  delivers illustrations which are much more aligned with traditional ukiyo-e prints and classical fine art, with an outstanding blend of eastern and western vibes. Ivan Zouravliov (Vania is a diminuitive) was born in Russia in an artistic environment, his father being a painter and his mother an art teacher. He soon became an internationally recognized prodigy child, exhibiting since the age of 13. He relocated to the UK as an adult, first to study at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland, finally to settle down in London. Some of his work was featured in National Geographic, The New York Times, and Duran Duran’s TV Mania album cover. His talent is incredible and well-recognised: he won the D&AD Yellow Pencil Award in 2007, th...
Continua a leggere

I have no mouth

Immagine
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream  is an original sci-fi short story written by  Harlan Ellison  in 1966. It won the prestigious Hugo Award for science fiction two years later, and was adapted by the author himself into a point and click graphic adventure game with the same name in 1995, which largely increased the title’s popularity and is today still considered a cult classic of horror videogames. Warning: this review contains spoilers for both the short story and videogame The plot follows the misadventures of five tortured souls. The story is set a post-apocalyptic world in which the Cold War evolved into a world war between three major potencies - the US, Russia, and China - each of which created their own super-computer, or “ Allied Mastercomputer” (AM) . One of the computers soon gained sentience, absorbed the other two, and re-named itself AM (after “ cogito, ergo sum … I think, therefore I  AM ”). Like most sentient beings, AM goes crazy and puts an end to ...
Continua a leggere

Shintaro Kago

Shintaro Kago is one of the few Japanese fucked up artists who gained a large amount of following in the western world. Born in Tokyo in 1969, he’s a contemporary mangaka and pioneer of the guro (gore) genre who reached somewhat of a cult following globally despite never receiving formal education in the arts. What made him so popular is his unique style which distorts realities, deforms the human body, turns the ordinary into surreal and vice versa. Observing his work is a bit like looking at children’s drawings, filled with exaggerations, mixing of themes and genres, imaginative experimentations with a dark twist that always culminate in the bizarre or the grotesque, but almost in a humorous way. Compared to other fucked up Japanese artists like Junji Ito and Suehiro Maruo , Shintaro Kago is less focused on conveying horror and more on delivering a feeling of estrangement through the sheer absurdity of his subjects. His art style is commonly defined as “ fashionable paranoia...
Continua a leggere