Page 25 - Studio International - January 1972

starting points may sometimes be derived from
radiographs; at the bottom of the portrait of
George Dyer staring at a blind cord (9) there are
relics of a spectral fluorescent profile on a
gigantic scale, now half deleted, as if Bacon
began (he does not now remember) by
reimagining the subject's head on the pattern
of radiography.
The book evidently ranks with the more
familiar sources of which Bacon has spoken—
Velasquez, Eisenstein, Muybridge and another
book on diseases of the mouth—as an influence
on his imagery. It does not in itself explain his
art, any more than do the others. Moreover,
turning over the pages of Positioning in
Radiography, one becomes aware of similar
affinities with pictures painted long before 1939.
In 1966 the book was called to mind by a
discussion of Degas and one of his pictures in
which, as Bacon said, 'You're suddenly
conscious of the spine as well as the flesh which
he usually just painted covering the bones'.
Pictures by Degas like the versions of Le Tub
done in 1886 (io) often show poses comparable
with those in which the radiographer places his
subjects (ix). Bacon's numerous pictures of
cognate poses, like Study for crouching nude 1952
(12), are hardly closer to the book (13).
Such relationships may appear incongruous
but they are not unnatural. The photographs
in the book demonstrate a figurative technique
quite similar to perspective projection. The
subject is placed in front of the plane on which
it is portrayed instead of behind it and the plane
may be aligned in any direction as easily as the
vertical, which is conventional in painting that
is to be looked at approximately horizontally,
but the basic geometry is the same. Nevertheless
there is a difference; the photographs illustrate,
not the internal structure itself, but simply the
position and the procedure that expose it. It is
worth examining the parallels for information
regarding an aspect of pictorial method, which
is easy to overlook. The position of the Venus
pudica (14), for instance, which many artists
beside Lorenzo di Credi have used in
innumerable forms, is equally indispensable to
the radiographer (15). It is not indicative of
mere coyness—that connotation is sometimes a
positive disadvantage. It is the only position in
which the upper articulation can be clearly read
as a compact whole. The wantonly voluptuous
exposure of Ingres' La Source (16) has another
significance for the radiographer; it is the only
way to X-ray certain states (17).
The figure poses of art are functional. It is
well known that the major elevations, frontal
and profile (i8), are the basic conditions of
legibility (19). These positions are the
elementary vocabulary in which human
structure, and personality as well, explain
themselves (21). The position of Masaccio's
boy (22) is vivid not only because it is
characteristic of shivering; an essential structure
is more clearly projected than in any alternative
position (23). The great Baptisms of the early
Renaissance, that of Piero della Francesca
15