(
'.
프란시스 베이컨이 여러 화가에게 영향을 받은 것은 알고 있었지만, 피카소를 이렇게 중하게 거론할 줄은 몰랐다. 암튼, 대단한 사람임에는 틀림없다. 오늘부터 지인이 준 책을 읽고 있는데 교재로 생각하고 있을만큼 파장이 크다. 큰 의미일 수록 심플하고 진솔하다.
.'
)
+ + +
Three Studies for the Portrait of Henrietta Moraes 1963
Oil on canvas three panels Each panel 14 1_8 x 12 1_8
written by Milan Kundera
때는 1972년 무렵이었다. 나는 프라하 외곽에 있는 어느 집에서 젊은 여자를 만나고 있었다. 그 집은 그곳 사람들이 내게 마련해주었다. 내가 만난 그 여자는 이틀 전에 경찰서에서 하루 종일 나에 관해 조사를 받았다. 그래서 그 여자는 남몰래 나를 만나 자신이 받은 취조의 내용을 나한테 알려주고 싶어 했던 것이다. 자기가 받은 질문과 자신이 한 대답들을 말이다. 그러면서 그녀는 남이 자신의 뒤를 밟고 있다는 점이 두렵다고 말했다. 그녀가 이렇게 나를 찾아준 이유는, 만에 하나 내가 훗날 취조를 받더라도 답변이 그녀의 그것과 일치해야 하기 때문이었다.
그녀는 아직 세상 경험이 많지 않은 꽃다운 청춘의 아가씨였다. 심문으로 인해 그녀는 가슴속을 캤奏?듯한 고통을 느꼈다. 그래서 벌써 사흘째 그녀의 창자는 뒤틀리는 듯했다. 그녀의 얼굴은 온통 창백했다. 그녀는 대화를 나누는 도중에 화장실에 가기 위해 방을 계속 들락거렸다. 그래서 그런지 만나는 도중 계속해서 변기의 물 매리는 소리가 들려왔다.
나는 그녀를 오래 전부터 알고 지냈다. 그녀는 지적이었고, 재기 발랄했다. 그녀는 자신의 감정을 잘 다스릴 줄 알았으며, 옷차림은 늘 나무랄ㄷ 없었다. 그래서인지 그녀의 행실은 물론이고 그녀의 옷차림도 사소한 허점 하나 노출하지 않았다. 그런데 지금 갑자기 두려움이 마치 칼날처럼 그녀를 절개하고 있었다. 그녀는 내 앞에서 서서 푸줏간 갈고리에 걸린 어린 염소의 갈라진 몸통같은 만신창이의 모습을 하고 있었다.
실제로 변기의 물 내리는 소리는 멈추지 않았다. 그래서 난 갑자기 그녀를 짓밟고 싶은 충돌이 일었다. 그녀를 짓밟는다는 말이 뜻하는 바는 무엇인가? 그건 그녀와 사랑을 나누고 싶다는 것이 아니다. 나는 그녀의 사랑을 노리고 있지는 않았다. 난 그녀의 얼굴에 잔인하게 손을 얹고 잠시라도 그녀를 완전하게 소유하고 싶었다. 그건 그녀가 갖고 있던 이율배반이 참을 수 없을 만큼 나를 자극했기 때문이었다. 나무랄 데 없는 옷차림과 요동치는 창자, 그녀의 이성과 그녀의 두려움, 그녀의 자부심과 그녀의 불행이라는 이율배반이 나를 자극하여 그녀를 소유하고 싶은 충동을 일게 했던 것이다. 난 이런 이율배반이 그녀의 본질을 숨기고 있다는 인상을 받았다. 보물, 금괴, 그녀의 가슴 깊숙이 숨어 있는 다이아몬드. 이런 것들이 그녀의 본질일지도 몰랐다. 나는 한순간이나마 그녀를 갖고 싶었다. 이루 형언할 수 없이 고귀한 영혼을 지녔으면서도 동시에 창자는 똥으로 가득 찬 그녀를.
하지만 난 불안한 듯 나를 주시하는 그녀의 눈을 보았다. 이성적인 얼굴의 불안스런 눈을 말이다. 그리고 그녀의 눈이 불안에 젖어 들면 들수록, 나의 탐욕을 실현한다는 것은 그만큼 더 불합리하고, 어리석고, 터무니없고, 이해할 수 없으며, 불가능해 보였다.
나의 탐욕은 잘못된 것이었고 또 용서할 수 없는 성격의 것이었지만, 실현 불가능한 것만은 아니었다. 프란시스 베이컨이 그린 세폭 그림triptych을 보면, 난 마치 그때의 기억이 되살아나는 듯함을 부인할 수 없다.
화가의 시선은 잔인한 손처럼 얼굴에 놓여 있다. 그러면서 화가의 시선은 그 얼굴의 본질, 즉 그 내면 깊숙한 곳에 놓여 숨어 있는 다이아몬드를 소유하려고 애쓰고 있다. 물론 그 깊은 내면이 정말로 뭔가를 숨기고 있는지 아닌지를 우리는 확인할 수가 없다. 하지만 그것은 어떻더라도 상관없다. 우리 모두에게는 잔인한 몸동작, 즉 손놀림이 있다. 타인의 얼굴을 쓰다듬으며, 타인의 가슴속에 혹은 그 깊은 곳에 숨어 있는 무엇인가를 발견해 내려는 손놀림이 말이다.
Head VI 1949 Oil on canvas, 93.2 x 76.5 cm (36 5/8 x 30 1/8 in)
Man with Dog 1953 Oil on canvas, 152.1 x 116.8 cm (59 7/8 x 46 in)
Painting 1946 Oil on canvas, 198.1 x 132.1 cm (78 x 52 in)
Self-Portrait 1971 Oil on canvas, 35.5 x 30.5 cm (14 x 12 in)
Study for Crouching Nude 1952 Oil and sand on canvas, 198.1 x 137.2 cm (78 x 54 in)
Three Studies for a Crucifixion - 1
Three Studies for a Crucifixion - 2
Three Studies for a Crucifixion - 3
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Onto Drool (2000) |
Onto Ooze (2001) |
Onto Drool (2001) |
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"Very few people find their real instincts. Every now and then there's an artist who does and who makes something new and actually thickens the texture of life. But it's very rare you have to be able to be really free to find yourself in that way, without any moral or religious constraints. After all, life is nothing but a series of sensations, so one may as well try and make oneself extraordinary, extraordinary and brilliant, even if it means becoming brilliant fool like me and having the kind of disastrous life that i have had. That is it."
Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon: Anatomy Of An Enigma, Michael Peppiatt.
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Sliced Self Portrait (2001) |
Shape Shifting Self (2001) |
Slither Self (2001) |
"I don't know if critics of literature are the idiots that critics of painting are in this country, because they're the biggest idiots that exist. They know absolutely fuck all about it to begin with. They've got no instinct about it, they've just got theories."
Francis Bacon talking to Burroughs, Arena, BBC 1986. |
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Reclining Alien Self Portrait (2000) |
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Auto Alien Self Portrait (2000) |
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"There is a kind of sensational image within the very, you could say, structure of your being, which is not to do with a mental image - when that image, through accident, begins to form..."
Francis Bacon, Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester. |
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Soggy Slime Self Portrait (2000) |
Soaked Self Portrait (2000) |
Severed Self Portrait (2000) |
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"Painting is the pattern of one's nervous system being projected on the canvas" Francis Bacon |
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Reptile Ruin Self Portrait (2000) |
Reptile Ruin Self Portrait (2000) |
Coming Apart Self Portrait (2000) |
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"But often the things that seem the most exaggerated can be the most true." Marilyn Manson |
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Ontological Drool Self-Portrait (1981) |
Shape-Shifting Reptilian (1981) |
Ontic-Slime Self-Portrait (1981) |
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"Thinking in primitive conditions (pre-organic) is the crystallization of forms, as in the case of crystal. In our thought, the essential feature is fitting new material into old schemes, making equal what is new." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power. |
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Ontologically Transparent 1 Self-Portrait (1981) |
Headless Female Form (1980) |
Ontologically Transparent 2 Self-Portrait (1981) |
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"A fact, a work is eloquent in a new way for every age and every new type of man. History always enunciates new truths." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power. |
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Alien-Being-towards-death (1979) |
Shape-Shifting-Alien Self-Portrait (1981) |
The Goat -Woman (1979) |
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"Man is beast and superbeast; the higher man is inhuman and superhuman: these belong together. Terribleness and greatness belong together: let us not deceive ourselves."
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power. |
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Triptych 1 (1981) |
Triptych 2 (1981) |
Triptych 3 (1981) |
Allen Ginsberg on Francis Bacon's painting method: "He said he did it with a chance brushstroke that looked in the magic - a fortuitous thing that he couldn't predict or orchestrate".
"I don't know if critics of literature are the idiots that critics of painting are in this country, because they're the biggest idiots that exist. They know absolutely fuck all about it to begin with. They've got no instinct about it, they've just got theories."
Bacon in conversation with Burroughs, Arena, BBC 1986.
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Punk (1981) |
Punk (1981) |
Punk (1981) |
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"Very few people find their real instincts. Every now and then there's an artist who does and who makes something new and actually thickens the texture of life. But it's very rare you have to be able to be really free to find yourself in that way, without any moral or religious constraints. After all, life is nothing but a series of sensations, so one may as well try and make oneself extraordinary, extraordinary and brilliant, even if it means becoming brilliant fool like me and having the kind of disastrous life that i have had. That is it."
Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon: Anatomy Of An Enigma, Michael Peppiatt, 1996.
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Wired-Self -Portrait(1981) |
Snide-Self-Portrait (1981) |
Sick-Self-Portrait (1981) |
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"Perhaps, at its deepest level, realism is always a subjective thing. When I see grass, I sometimes want to pull up a clump and simply paint it on the canvas. But of course that would not work, and we need to invent the techniques by which reality can be conveyed to our nervous system without losing the objectivity of the thing portrayed."
Letter to Michel Leiris from Francis Bacon. |
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Self-Torso (2000) |
Self-Torso (2000) |
Self-Torso (2000)
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" My paintings are, if you like, a record of this distortion...Abstract art is free fancy about nothing. nothing comes from nothing. One needs the specific images to unlock the deeper sensations, and the mystery of accident and intuition to create the particular. Now I want to do portraits more than anything else, because they can be done in a way outside illustration. It is a gamble composed of luck, intuition and order. Real art is always ordered no matter how much has been given by chance."
Francis Bacon in conversation with Michael Peppiatt, 1963.
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Self-Alien-Portrait (2000) |
Non-Self-Portrait (2000) |
Ontic-Slime Self-Portrait (2000) |
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"It's like looking into a mirror only it's not... When this is over I want you to take this face and burn it...You want to take his face off. Eyes, Nose, Mouth off."
From the Gage/Travolta film Face-Off. |
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Fractured Face Self-Portrait (2000) |
Half-Man-Half-Alien (2000) |
Face-Off Self-Portrait (2000) |
| "Half monster, half human, Bacon's creatures are frozen not in a pose or image, but in time itself. - time as a continuous phenomenon, a dimension that is a more essential part of reality than mere appearance. The challenge for the artist, therefore, is not to make visible a detached moment of general time, a story, anecdote or piece of narrative, but to demonstrate time itself as a continuum."
Christophe Domino, Francis Bacon: Taking Reality by Surprise, 1997. |
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Self -Portrait (1980) |
Slither-Self-Portrait (2000) |
Slither-Self-Portrait (2000) |
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"The existential-ontological constitution of Dasein's totality is grounded in temporality. Hence the ecstatical projection of Being must be made possible by some primordial way in which ecstatical temporality temporalizes. How is this mode of the temporalizing of temporality to be Interpreted? Is there a way which leads from primordial time to the meaning of Being? Does time itself manifest itself as the horizon of Being?"
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 1927.
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Slime-Self-Portrait (1999) |
Becoming Alien Self-Portrait (1999) |
Alien-Self-Portrait (2000) |
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"Falling Being-in-the-world is not only tempting and tranquilizing; it is at the same time alienating. Yet this alienation cannot mean that Dasein gets factically torn away from itself. On the contrary, this alienation drives it into a kind of Being which borders on the most exaggerated 'self-dissection', tempting itself with all possiblities of explanation, so that the very 'characterologies' and 'typologies' which it has brought about are themselves already becoming something that cannot be surveyed at a glance."
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 1927.
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Self-Body-Portrait (1981) |
Alien-Self-Body-Portrait (2000) |
Self-Torso-Portrait (1999) |
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"I myself think you have to break technique, break tradition, to do something really new. You always go back into tradition, but you have to break it and reinvent it first.."
Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon: Anatomy Of An Enigma, Michael Peppiatt, 1996. |
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Soiled-Self-Portrait (1980) |
Alien-Self-Portrait (2000) |
Liquid-Self-Portrait (1980) |
| "The whole thing has become so boring and bourgeois. Art is just a way now of making money."
Bacon interview with Peppiatt, Art International, Autumn 1989, Paris. |
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Self-Torso-Portrait with Liquid Leaking Head (20000 |
Reptile Slit-Head self-portrait (2000) |
Razor-Reptile Self-Portrait (2000) |
| "I do, of course, work very more by chance now than I did when I was young. For instance, I throw an awful lot of paint onto things, and I don't know what's going to happen... I throw it with my hands. I just squeeze it into my hand and throw it on".
Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon: Taking Reality by Surprise, C Domino, 1997. |
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Being-There Self-Portrait (1999) |
Fused-Self-Portrait (1999) |
Early Self-Portrait (1979) |
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"Great art has always returned people to life more violently. And they appreciate life in a more intense way - abstract art is a form of pattern making...For me abstract art can be nothing but decoration because there is nothing to anchor it except its artistic allure".
Francis Bacon, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon, Daniel Farson. |
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Being Nearly Reptile Self-Portrait (1999) |
Shape-Shifting-Alien-Self-Portrait (2000) |
Rembrandt-Reptile Self-Portrait (1999) |
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"All I want to do is distort reality of the human figure into reality...You know, the trouble with Lucian's work is that it's realistic without being real."
Francis Bacon talking to Daniel Farson about Lucian Freud. |
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Only-Half-Human Self-Portrait (1999) |
Auto-Alien Self-Portrait (2000) |
Face-Off 2 Self portrait (1999) |
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"Instinct arises out of that whole unconscious sea inside us...I just work as closely to my nerves as I can, and as I'm bound up closely in my world today, perhaps it does reflect savage tensions and vacuous spaces...Nietzsche forecast our future for us...he told us it's all so meaningless we might as well by extraordinary."
Francis Bacon, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon, Daniel Farson. |
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Face-Off 1 (1999) |
Alien-Self-Portrait (2000) |
Face-Off 2 (1999) |
| "It's only due to your own nervous system that you can paint at all...so the thing is, how can I draw one more veil away from life and present what is called the living sensation more nearly on the nervous system and more violently?"
Francis Bacon, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon, Daniel Farson.
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Shape-Shifting Reptilian Self-Portrait (1981) |
Alien-Self-Portrait
Hybrid (1980) |
Alien-Self-Portrait Hybrid (1980)
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