Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self (Essays in Art and Culture) - Softcover

Van Alphen, Ernst

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674317637 ISBN 13: 9780674317635

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1994

Synopsis

Since his death in April 12 Francis Bacon has been acclaimed as one of the very greatest of modern painters. Yet most analyses of Bacon actually neutralize his work by discussing it as an existential expression and as the horrifying communication of an isolated individual—which simply transfers the pain in the paintings back to Bacon himself. This study is the first attempt to account for the pain of the viewer.

It is also, most challengingly, an explanation of what Bacon’s art tells us about ourselves as individuals. For, during this very personal investigation, the author comes to realize that the effect of Bacon’s work is founded upon the way that each of us carves our identity, our “self,” from the inchoate evidence of our senses, using the conventions of representation as tools. It is in his warping of these conventions of the senses, rather than in the superficial distortion of his images, that Bacon most radically confronts “art,” and ourselves as individuals.

About this title

About the Author:

Ernst Van Alphen is Professor of Comparitive Literature, University of Leiden (Netherlands).

Review:

This examination of critical reactions to Bacon is very welcome The Art Newspaper

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0674317637
• ISBN 13: 9780674317635
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208