Page 51 - Studio International - October 1965

he has been up to now and his images in their oblique image even if the turned smear of paint paradoxically
directness are becoming more integrated in their renders more clear the expression on the sitter's face.
unity. The recent showing at the Marlborough New In the large Crucifixion-Triptych we enter the world of
London Gallery treats us to some studies for portraits a slaughter-house Fuseli. a Grand Guignol morgue
of persons who are obviously real; it is true that there that tightens our skin. Is this a personal Gethsemane of

Henry Moore are the derivations from Muybridge (the book of photo­ the artist's? By its very obscurity we share it as it is
Three Way Piece No. 1 (Points)
1964 graphs of people in movement) but we see a self­ shared by the soft-hatted witnesses in the righthand
Bronze 25 in. long portrait study in taut, trouser-twisted pose with the panel, brutalized by the morbid spectacle. No one can
Marlborough New London Gallery
blistered head against a projecting square like a wall­ move us with paint as Bacon moves us; if life itself
cupboard. There are three studies for George Dyer (the has become crucified by man, Bacon's comment is
head), three each of the heads of Lucien Freud ( a explicit and disquieting.
favourite model) and of Isobel Rawsthorne; there is In mood and concept, Henry Moore is the antithesis
also a full length of the last-named sitter in which the of Bacon. The exhibition of his work in the same gallery,
chair she sits on becomes part of her and she of it as dated from 1951 with an Upright Interior Form (Flower),
her own legs take the place of the chair's front legs. a small bronze with marked vegetable reference up to
This last painting marks. it seems to me a new plastic the Three Wav Pieces of 1963 and 1964. brings us into
direction for Bacon; that dynamic distortion that has the strength of his imagery and his full majesty of those
been present is now isolated as of itself; in the painting forms that create presences of themselves. Yet comment
only the torn rug and the tilted angle of the corner wall is implicit in Moore as it is in Bacon. Atom piece, a
preserve the setting's perspective and there are no 4 ft. high bronze is an enlarged skull. it is a totemic
distracting elements. There is increasing solidity in the head. it is a stylised naturalistic rendering of a damaged
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