Key thoughts

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Since Unit 1 to now, my small topics developed from traces of people and empty spaces where have an evoking factor to make audiences think of the traces. Through the development of describing groups of people, I started to make figures out in this Unit. Within a plain imaginary construction of these people in my thought, they should be in ordinary movements, with similar body shapes, having been delayering of faces and individuality. These kind of simulated faces and bodies slowly formed biscuits dolls with milliput clays I used (The reason I used milliput clay is that it do not break and dries easily, so I can place them repeatedly.).

 

 

 

Francis Bacon 

How could ourself trap us.

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Mist covering the night, we are here again, talking about the unreal destination.

Then he rambled in those clouds, red jacket, touched dogs’ tails yet,

He still wants, the uncanny story.

Where we stop, we saw the dog. Black dark, thin and tired.

--A random writing of mine when I when to Bacon’s exhibition.

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Bacon’s cages, always trap screaming men, despairing souls. ‘His subjects were always portrayed as violently distorted, almost slabs of raw meat, that are isolated souls imprisoned and tormented by existential dilemmas.’--the art story.org.

What I really care about is the way he drew cages. For the picture Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X and Head VI, these two drawings described the same person, in Bacon’s vey unique screaming figure. He used only white lines in the Head VI, built a transparent cage for the character, however in the other one, a more fluency method is used to build the cage, yellow lines are strong and vivid, as well as it mixed in dark background, they are forming a more active and powerful sense than the head one. Therefore, white chalk-like lines on Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X is a much more stable cage even the background is flowing. Hence, in my own feeling, the white-lined cage creates a more enclosed space, and the yellow-lined cage is a more open, fluid space with dynamic communication with the outside world. 

The reasons causing these effects are, white-lined cage feel like an external space making to separate the main character from the world it exists. A reason I say that is because the cage is just covering his head, and the whole active he does in this picture is just screaming out of his mouth. Other body part of him is just steadily, formally, gently sitting on the chair which stands of his priority. It is violence inside the cage, it is silence out there. A white lined cage separated the visual and auditory, the artist was controlling the limitation of receiving information by audiences' sense organs.

 

Generally speaking, the spatial nature of painting relies on visual perception, while sculpture and architecture rely not only on visual perception but also on tactile and kinesthetic senses. However, there is no doubt that the importance and advantage of vision are evident. When appreciating spatial art, tactile, kinesthetic, and visual senses work together. Therefore, spatial art is also called visual art. The terms spatial art, visual art, and static art are interconnected in their scope, all referring to art that creates visible, static spatial images using physical materials.--Introduction to Art.

In these two paintings, Bacon's use of painting techniques deepens the sense of space and highlights the different effects and emotions of the two paintings by contrasting fluidity and stability. In my view, the statement from ‘Introduction to Art’ mentioned above can, to some extent, reveal how different senses can provide multiple resonances to a viewer at the same time, and thus conclude that when one sense is closed off, other senses are also affected. I think this is the precise impression that Bacon's painting of the white cage gives me.