Page 58 - Studio International - January 1969

and contorts with singular flexibility. Nothing
5 attendants are pictures recalling Bacon's own
Francis Bacon Triptych: two figures lying on a bed
with attendants 1968
oil and pastel on canvas each panel 78 x 58 in.
6
Antoni Tapies Envelope 1968
pen and ink, collage on board 23 x 20 in.
7
Alechinsky Oui ou non or La perplexité du sphinx 1968
acrylic and ink 82¾ x 78 in.
46
central panel, true to the altar-piece tradition,
like the stiff papier-mache mask that Ensor has a backdrop, but in this case it is a Vene-
took to be the human physiognomy. tian blind, operating in this context as prison
In a recent and superb portrait of Lucian bars.
Freud, Bacon comes the nearest to speaking of There is something synoptic or perhaps auto-
individual character, and yet, the painting is biographical in this triptych, which brings in
a painting first, and the face is still in an a new and almost indefinable emotion which
agonizing state of becoming. Unusually simple at the beginning I called nostalgic. It is not
with its horizontal zones of colour, the paint- only Bacon's allusion to his own previous
ing gains a vivid extra life because of an work. It is also a kind of distancing in which
absolutely inspired diagonal stroke of white the convulsive aspect of the paint-wielding is
that seems to penetrate Freud's ankle and, in less important, the cues less immediate. Mel-
its transversal force, conjures an extra space so low, though, is hardly the word for it.
dramatically. It has been a generous season for European
Bacon's penchant for the drama of the triptych artists. Besides Bacon, there have been shows
is illustrated in the exhibition by two examples, of Antoni Tapies, at the MARTHA JACKSON
one of 1957 based on Eliot's 'Sweeney GALLERY, and Pierre Alechinsky at the
Agonistes' in which the two end panels are LEFEBRE GALLERY. I think both of these
occupied by the familiar Baconian cage on a artists are at their best in their intimate works
dais and the centre panel is an old-masterish — that is the works in which their writing or
view of a room interior, reminding us of drawing impulse is not inhibited. In the case
Bacon's earlier essays in surrealism. Here, the of Tapia, his most stirring images for me are
still-life on a vanity table is bloody, while the always those almost barren planes on which
blue night outside the window is serene. It he scribbles some cryptic message of loneli-
has the thriller psychology, that 'something ness. The fewer the lines, the less complicated
terrible has happened here' shock which is the textures, the more compelling his work.
not nearly as moving as Bacon's mortal Tapies has not lost his essential awe before the
wrestling with the human image. emptiness of matter that is not traversed by
The other triptych, called 2 figures lying on a man. The authenticity of his graffiti is best
bed with attendants (in the catalogue at least), experienced in those works where he limits his
is far more disquieting in Bacon's strongest notation severely.
vein. The whole is unified by the curving Alechinsky, on the other hand, is at his best
arena provided by mauve walls and a reddish- when the frenzy of his pencil or brush clutters
orange floor. The attendants in each side up the foreplane and forces the eye into the
panel are seated, one nude, one dressed, maze of his thoughts, both plastic and literary.
before symbolic cages on which Bacon has These new paintings, always combined with
poised skeletal animal shapes. Behind the frank drawing, sparkle in their transparent
high colour, and their vivacious extrapola-
series of studies of Van Gogh, only the lonely tions in black and white.
figures with their shadows are embryonic or Julio Cortazar in his beautiful catalogue in-
protoplasmic, or anything but human. The troduction, is quite right to speak of
same is true of the simian figures in the central `Alechinsky country'.
panel in spoon position on the couch—embry-
onic, foetal, or human, all too human? This