|
''Fragment of a Crucifixion'' is a 1950 painting by Irish-born artist Francis Bacon (1909–1992) and one of his many works based on iconography of the Crucifixion of Jesus. Its two distressed figures are at the end of a bloody struggle, with one positioned at the point of kill. The dying animal's scream forms the centerpiece of the work. Although the painting's title contains religious connotations, Bacon was an atheist, and there is no hope divinity in the work. Instead, it is intended to represent what he saw as the hopelessness of the human condition.〔Davis, 404〕 A muscular male dog stoops on a horizontal beam that forms part of a T-shaped structure intended to both signify Christ's cross and indicate a beam hanging over a door. An apparently female chimera is trapped within this frame, and is powerless in the course of being mutilated by the dog. Blood pours from the canine's mouth onto the head and body of his prey, who is rendered as owl-like but with human facial characteristics. Characteristic of Bacon's work, the painting is influenced by a wide variety of sources, including the scream of the nurse in Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent film "The Battleship Potemkin",〔 photographs of Adolf Eichmann, and many depictions of the biblical crucifixion and lowering from the Cross. ==Description== The two figures are positioned in the center foreground of the canvas. Although both are mutilated and covered in blood, their physical discomfort is contrasted against a tranquil and flat, warm background typical of Bacon's work from this period. The figures exhibit many elements typical of Bacon's early work, most noticeably the expressive broad strokes, which are set in contrast against the tightness of the flat, unmemorable, background. The painting contains the same white angular rails Bacon had inserted into the mid-ground of his 1949 ''Head II'' and ''Head IV'', as well as the ''Study for Portrait'' of the same year. In ''Fragment...'', the rails are positioned just below the area where the horizontal and vertical bars of the cross intersect. The rail begins with a diagonal line which intersects the owl at what appears to be the creature's shoulder.〔 A horizontal angular geometrical shape is sketched in white and grey in the mid-ground, and represents an early form of a spatial device Bacon was to develop and perfect over the course of the 1950s, when it effectively became a cage used to frame the anguished figures portrayed in Bacon's foregrounds.〔Zweite, 114〕〔Rothenstein, John. "Francis Bacon: Exhibition Cath." Tate Gallery, 23 May-1 July 1962〕〔Sylvester, 36〕 The body of the fleshy part-bird 〔Gale, Matthew. "(Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion )". Tate. Retrieved on 18 April 2009.〕 chimera is rendered with light paint, and from it hang narrow red drips of paint, indicating the drips and spatter of blood. Pentimenti is used to convey the blood of the death throes the figures have brought to each other.〔 The link with the biblical Crucifixion is made through the raised arms of the lower creature and the T shaped cross.〔van Alphen, 91〕 While the upper creature is obviously modelled on a dog,〔The Tate suggest it may have been modelled on a cat. See Gale, 1998〕 it seems likely that the chimera is based on pictures of bats Bacon kept in his private collection of images.〔Sylvester, 40〕 The lower figure's human aspect is seen most notably in the details of its mouth and genitalia. In the mid-ground, the artist has sketched a street scene, which features a number of walking figures and cars. The pedestrians appear unaffected and uninterested in the slaughter before them. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fragment of a Crucifixion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|