Metropolitan
Francis Bacon, 1975, Lithograph, 62 1/2" x 43 1/4"
Known for the unsettling darkness that undergirds his art, Bacon does not shy away from the difficult and uncanny. Both traits are present in this painting, which eludes obvious meaning. The work is a reimagining of the middle panel of an earlier triptych by the artist, made different principally by the addition of the strange humanoid figure in the foreground. In this museum, the portraits on the wall are hostile and haunting and the sculpture misses its limbs and melts into shadow. The direct gaze of the reclining figure alludes to the motif in Renaissance art whereby the artist would paint one figure looking directly out at the viewer from the depicted scene to draw her into the painting and implicate her in the message of the work. The challenge to Bacon’s viewer, then, is perhaps the question: how am I implicated in this uncanny display or judgment of art?