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Contextual Studies: Visual Analysis Essay
Morris Bacon
Tutor: Liz Bradshaw
Word Count: 500
CONTEXTUAL STUDIES
ASSESSMENT TASK I: Visual Analysis
PAIR 2 Francis Bacon; Eisenstein
Francis Bacon – Self-Portait 1971
This painting is an abstract, distorted representation of the artist; the facial features are disproportionate; slanted and crippled. The background and surroundings are completely black. The figure appears isolated in a dark, lifeless environment. The artist’s chosen palette is extremely drab and melancholy. Shades of off-hue blues, greens, browns, greys and blacks are mottled around the patchy, distorted figure. The eyes are large, consuming the middle of the head. Swollen and puffy, they give the sense of distance, isolation, and weariness. The nose is completely buckled. One-side of Bacon’s face looks almost caved-in, crumpled. Half of the mouth is missing, with the right-hand side draped in darkness. Bacon appears to be wearing a white-collared shirt underneath a jacket of some description. Bleak, vague and drab, Bacon hasn’t been kind to himself in this characteristically-abstract and isolated self-portrait.
Still from ‘Battleship Potemkin’ 1925 dir Eisenstein
This is a still image from the 1925 black & white silent film that’s based on historical events. The film is an account of a great Russian naval mutiny, and a resulting street demonstration which brought on a police massacre. In this particular film still, the man is wrought with fear, eyes wide open, jaw-dropped, in a state of absolute shock. Because alot of old films were rendered with high exposure, the man’s face is predominantly white, lacking in depth and texture, whereas the gaping mouth is a black. The man’s fear-stricken face consumes the most-part of the image, his head cropped above the eyebrows, and his chin cropped away; the man’s eyes and mouth dominating the image. One eye is highly-exposed, you can only just differentiate from the surrounding white of the eye. The other eye is shrouded in darkness. The image gives the view a sense of harrowing, wild fear, and makes you wonder what it is that this seemingly innocent man has or is witnessing. I can only imagine that he’s seen one of his fellow crewmates being massacred.
Links and Responses
Upon first glance at these images, one notes that neither of them of any comfort or warmth to the viewer, especially with regard to colour theory. Bacon’s self-portrait is a mottled mess of blues, browns, whites, greys and greens, whereas the still from ‘Battleship Potemkin’ is highly-exposed, weathered and sinister in it’s rather brash black and white format. In his self-portrait, Bacon appears stuck in a world of isolation and darkness, as does the man from Eisenstein’s production. One presumes that he is on-board a naval ship, trapped, with no-way out - isolated & helpless. Bacon’s image wallows self-disgust, loneliness. The image reeks of anxiety and unhappiness with himself. I have gathered from research that this was a particularly traumatic time for Bacon. His alcoholic lover committed suicide in 1971, when this was painted. I think the main link between the two images is a sense of entrapment.
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