Page 24 - Studio International - January 1972

Positioning in

Representation

Lawrence Gowing

It is a mystery how the ways of art transform
themselves continually yet remain recognizable
as what they are. Every clue to the mystery is
worth following. In 1966 Francis Bacon told
David Sylvester ' ... I've always had a book that
has influenced me very much called Positioning
in Radiography, which has photographs of the
positioning of the body for the X-rays to be
taken and also the X-ray photographs
themselves'.
The book of which he spoke is an
encyclopaedic manual by the late Miss Kathleen
Clara Clark first published in 1939, which
contains (in the eighth edition of 1964) more
than 2500 plates. The photographs were taken
under conditions which do not permit their
reproduction, they are illustrated here in
diagrammatic outline. Knowledge of the
radiographic methods and results recorded in
the book are reflected in Francis Bacon's
pictures in several ways. They have often
indicated to him the actuality of inward
structure. Sometimes they have evidently
suggested emphatic repetitions, as in the central
panel of Triptych 1968 — Two figures lying on a bed
with attendants (i), like the succession of almost
identical presentations in the clinical method (2).
Radiographs remind him of the hard fact within
the flesh, emotional as much as physical, like the
dark core which is made visible in Study for a
portrait 1967 (3).
Occasionally an arrangement for
radiography provides him with an actual motif.
Experiences of Goya's black pictures in the
Prado and an appalling accident to a friend
combined to inspire Three studies for the human
body 1967 (5) but the starting point seems to have
been a plate in the book which had points of
contact with both (6). Sometimes the memory of
a radiograph may have given a clue (of which
the artist is unaware) to the formulation of an
unregarded aspect of appearances. In the
portrait of Miss Muriel Belcher 1959 (7) a
nostril is seen with midnight clarity as a section
of the huge cavity of the nose (8). Bacon's
starting point often sets off a train of associations
that leads in quite a different direction; he has
described how the famous Painting 1946 in New
York began as a bird alighting in a field. Such
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