Francis Bacon Exhibition, Tate Britain, London

I was pleasantly surprised with the latest Francis Bacon exhibition.
You might say 'pleasant' does not sound like the appropriate word. Screaming faces, bodies trapped in dark cages, blood and guts are hardly the most pleasant way to spend a sunny Saturday morning with your lover. Well, thanks to the Tate, our decision to 'give it a go' was rewarded and you shall stand corrected.

For the first time in quite a few recent Tate experiences, the inevitable fight-to-the-death-to-get-a-5-second-look-at-half-a-painting ordeal was bearable and almost excusable. Yes, it was crowded, yes, you had to queue, but at least there was space to move and enough curatorial food for novice thoughts, which is not always the case at Tate.

It was my first Bacon exhibition. I had never seen any of his paintings in the flesh. And I do not have a vast knowledge of his art either. I was curious, and somehow he keeps popping up in my life recently. When I realised it was on, I took it as a sign. The direction it pointed to is hard to take but I am a step closer.

What you get out of anything depends on how much you put in it. You have to be in a certain state of mind to enter Bacon's world. Either unbalanced or transcended-your-weaknesses-to-turn-them-into-strenghts sort of state. No need to point out which side I'm on.

So what did I get out of it? I understand his obsession with the representation of the Pope. Here my thoughts are necessarily biased: it is an imagery linked to cultural and spiritual burdens which I am heavily carrying.
One of my friends told me she did not enjoy it because the subject matters were alien to her. She could understand them on an intellectual level, but she did not relate to them. To her this meant his art did not work. Strangely the subject matters were not what touched me most. Another friend could not quite remember what she saw, only what it made her feel. Most of the time I am the same. I cannot remember exactly what I saw. But on a few occasions, and this was one of those (another was with a few Monets at Marmottan), the visual experience is such that the memory of the feeling cannot exist without its visual source. More than that, the feeling is the vision. So much unconscious, so much inexpressible is contained into it that it is it.
It seems to me a Jungian thing (from the little knowledge I have of his work) and a very filmic experience.

In the last few months I have become obsessed with layers and relief. I loathe smoothness; I like it thick! I was most keen on Bacon's later works and one Pope: Untitled, 1950. The Pope is not a prisoner of the cage; the lines act as proofs: he is as much outside as inside of the cage. He is a prisoner of things we cannot see and yet, they are all there in front of us. A dialogue with the invisible, through the visible.

I wish I could let it out in this way.

© asd - 2009