# 7 Reece Mews: Francis Bacon's Studio by Perry Ogden

7 Reece Mews is a book of photographs by Perry Odgen taking place in Francis Bacon's workshop in London just after he died in 1992. Odgen spent three days alone in the studio in order to understand (or desunderstand) how his photographs should exists. The result is a description of a space by a juxtaposition of pieces assembled in the reader's imagination in order to compose a whole.
This chaotic subterranean - the studio is on first floor but the side window is clogged, only the ceiling window is furnishing natural light - fits perfectly with Deleuze description of Bacon's attitude in The Logic Of Sensation (see former post for an excerpt) about a new painting starting not with a white canvas but with a fulfill canvas that the painter has to free from superfluous elements.
The photographs transcribe well the influences and references used by Francis Bacon in his work. In this sea of documents, you find book on Velasquez or Seurat, pictures of wrestlers, of himself, of nude models, of his former paintings, chronophotographs etc. just like this mess was nothing else than Bacon's mind itself materialized on the floor and on the walls, and the painting just being a selected frame of this monad.

# Our Daily Bread by Nikolaus Geyrhalter

Our Daily Bread illustrates human's anthropocentrism by following Descartes who was wishing to see human becoming "master and owner of the nature". In fact, what this movie introduces is a global elaborate machine providing food for the Western World. It is then interesting as architects to wonder who are the designers as such a system and to notice that those ones are completely disconnected to the daily operation of their devices.
The comparison of this machine to a wider extent of a political system seems appropriate looking at the mechanization of the apparatuses, the subjectivation of the bodies and the exclusion and suppression of elements that are not adapted to such a system (here weak chickens, oversized apples, weirdly shaped eggs etc.).
However, the film, by its aesthetization of the machinery and the absence of comments, leaves the documentary genre to series of very ambiguous paintings often tending towards Rembrandt and Bacon as far slaughterhouses are concerned.

Pity the meat! Meat is undoubtedly the chief object of Bacon’s pity, his only object of pity, his Anglo-Irish pity. On this point he is like Soutine, with his immense pity for the Jew. Meat is not dead flesh; it retains all the sufferings and assumes all the colors of living flesh. It manifests such convulsive pain and vulnerability, but also such delightful invention, color, and acrobatics. Bacon does not say, “Pity the beasts,” but rather that every man who suffers is a piece of meat. Meat is the common zone of man and the beast, their zone of indiscernibility; it is a “fact”, a state where the painter identifies with the objects of his horror and his compassion. The painter is certainly a butcher, but he goes to the butcher’s shop as if it were a church, with the meat as the crucified victim. Bacon is a religious painter only in butcher’s shops.

Gilles Deleuze. The logic of sensation. Continuum 2003

PS: The film also shows what I think are incredible underground salt quarries. If anybody have some information or pictures or those, I'd be very interested to read about them.

# Francis Bacon The logic of sensation by Gilles Deleuze

After a post on Victoria Reynolds' photographs directly related in my opinion to Gilles Deleuze's Logic of sensation (1981) about Francis Bacon's work (see previous post), here is another quote. (original French version follows the English text).

It is a mistake to think that the painter works on a white surface. The figurative belief follows from this mistake. If the painter were before a white surface, he – or she – could reproduce on it an external object functioning as a model. But such is not the case. The painter has many things in his head, or around him, or in his studio. Now everything he has in his head or around him is already in the canvas, more or less virtually, more or less actually, before he begins his work. They are all present in the canvas as so many images, actual or virtual, so that the painter does not have to cover a blank surface, but rather would have to empty it out, clear it, clean it. He does not paint in order to reproduce on the canvas an object functioning as model; he paints on images that are already there, in order to produce a canvas whose functioning will reverse the relations between model and copy. In short, what we have to define are all these “givens” [données] that are on the canvas before the painter’s work begins, and determine, among these givens, which are an obstacle, which are a help, or even the effects of a preparatory work.

Gilles Deleuze. Francis Bacon The logic of sensation. Continuum 2003 (translated by Daniel W. Smith)

C’est une erreur de croire que le peintre est devant une surface blanche. La croyance figurative découle de cette erreur : en effet si le peintre est devant une surface blanche, il pourrait y reproduire un objet extérieur fonctionnant comme modèle. Mais il n'en est pas ainsi. Le peintre a beaucoup de choses dans la tête, ou autour de lui, ou dans l'atelier. Or, tout ce qu’il a dans la tête, ou autour de lui est déjà dans la toile, plus ou moins virtuellement, plus ou moins actuellement avant qu’il ne commence son travail. Tout cela est présent sur la toile, a titre d’images, actuelles ou virtuelles. Si bien que le peintre n'a pas à remplir une surface blanche, il aurait plutôt à vider, désencombrer, nettoyer. Il ne peint donc pas pour reproduire sur la toile, un objet fonctionnant comme un modèle, il peint sur des images déjà là, pour produire une toile dont le fonctionnement va renverser les rapports du modèle et de la copie. Bref ce qu’il faut définir, ce sont toutes ces « données » qui sont sur la toile avant que le travail du peintre commence. Et parmi ces données, lesquelles sont un obstacle, lesquelles une aide, ou même les effets d’un travail préparatoire.

Gilles Deleuze. Francis Bacon Logique de la sensation. Seuil 2002

# Victoria Reynolds' paintings + Deleuze's logic of sensation

Here is Victoria Reynolds' work who paint some incredible canvas of meat composing some very evocative carne-landscapes. Her work is very likely to be linked with Francis Bacon's paintings (see former post) as Gilles Deleuze describes it in his Logic of sensation:

Pity the meat! Meat is undoubtedly the chief object of Bacon’s pity, his only object of pity, his Anglo-Irish pity. On this point he is like Soutine, with his immense pity for the Jew. Meat is not dead flesh; it retains all the sufferings and assumes all the colors of living flesh. It manifests such convulsive pain and vulnerability, but also such delightful invention, color, and acrobatics. Bacon does not say, “Pity the beasts,” but rather that every man who suffers is a piece of meat. Meat is the common zone of man and the beast, their zone of indiscernibility; it is a “fact”, a state where the painter identifies with the objects of his horror and his compassion. The painter is certainly a butcher, but he goes to the butcher’s shop as if it were a church, with the meat as the crucified victim. Bacon is a religious painter only in butcher’s shops.

Gilles Deleuze. The logic of sensation. Continuum 2003

Thanks once more to Eduardo !

# Francis BACON @ the Tate Britain

Amazing exhibition of one the most interesting modern painter, Francis BACON at the TATE Britain (until 4 january 2009) .

This painter establishes a spacial dimension , in most of his artwork, and sometimes he's also dealing with the architectural space, giving some detail of a real scene, like doors or stairs.

His way to create a composition really amazing like the triptychs, thanks to a mix between painting and graphic design the composition is telling a story..

In his serie of self portrait he's depicting three sides of his own face almost in mouvement, the mix of colours create a real effect of motion, an the three pictures seems to be three dimensional object.

Go to the TATE and judge by yourself !

# Musée d'Art Moderne à Beaubourg

Pour ceux qui sont encore à Paris, n'oubliez pas qu'il existe un très grand fond d'art moderne et contemporain à Beaubourg ! De plus les collections sont souvent renouvellées ce qui nous permet de découvrir de nouvelles choses à chaque visite. En plus de pouvoir admirer les Duchamp, Picabia, Ernst, Bacon ou Huygues, Pei Ming, Depardon vous pourrez aussi faire un tour par les salles architecture et vous intéresser aux grands expérimentateurs architecturaux que sont Haus Rucker-Co, Graham Stevens, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Archigram, R&Sie ou EZCT.
Bonne visite !!!