Francis Bacon Painting Study

First of all, as being a college student I was more interested to add an art appreciation subject besides my other classes that I'm taking this fall of 2012 at Des Monies Area Community College. One of the reasons why I decided to take this course because I truly believe that this class will open my eyes to the beauty of nature and our surroundings, give me a better knowledge of what art means to us, understand it, and knowing what could this topic add to my personal experience, now or later on in future.
Applying, space, line, shape, color, light, motion, time, and abstraction and those are the basics I have included earlier in this introduction. All of these elements might be represented in a painting, or any other kind of art works. However, not all of these terms we mentioned above are important to be applied on a certain piece of artwork. One of the main points we should understand here is how we can feel and talk with the paintings, it is useful for us to examine one at a time, some of the expressive qualities of each of those aspects of visual form of arts.
Next, how can we interpret what's on artist's mind and what is he trying to explain from his own personal perspective. The artist objects can lead us to variety of unknown targets! His targets can be viewers or referring to social issues, culture differences, and the human being life. As if we go further to spend time on a particular piece of artwork, we should examine what interests us and what's not. How could we explain a certain point, analyzing the reasons of why we don't get the meaning that artist has made or maybe we could move into different theories and see it differently than the creator of the work which is okay. However, that doesn't mean if we speak in different form then we might miss out the real meaning of the work and perhaps get lost in the artwork itself. I personally think that there isn't right or wrong in analyzing an artistic piece, because even we attempt to understand it based on how we feel the work itself. Most importantly are we able to reach at least one to three general explanations based on what we explored in the piece of artwork and what's the significance message that the artist has made to his medium. Not from a long time ago, when I went down with my art instructor Mrs. Chrisine Mullane and my classmates to the Des Monies Art Center here in Iowa. From a personal experience, I would say visiting an art galleries or museums is my second favorable place to visit after theaters in all its meanings. I see myself that I belong to that beautiful environment. At the beginning of this month and during my visit to the art center, I was very attached and fascinated by such an interesting, powerful, art artwork created by a British artist named Francis Bacon and his painting titled as "Study after Velazquz's portrait of Pope Innocent X "painted in 1953. Medium that artis's has used on his painting was oil on canvas; measurements are (153cm x 118cm)!
Who is Francis Bacon?

Bacon was born in Dublin in 1909, he spent the majority of his life living and working in Great Britin, London. He was working at developing his special and unique, distinct style of figurative painting. He left his home at age of 15, traveling to London, British and Paris. One of his inspirational artists in early modern art was Paplo Picasso. Bacon, later on decided to settle in London, where he designed Bauhaus-Style furnishings and later, during war time, he joined the Civil Defense.
Now, to have an idea on what did Francis Bacon trying to tell us in his portrait of pope innocent, we should at this time back up little it, and understand that artists in many societies under any period of time have used their work to criticize or influence public opinions. Often times, the criticism that they've been using is clear and direct, and that's what we can see through bacon's painting "Study after Velazquz's portrait of Pope Innocent X".
What was Bacon's main point in that particular work? Based on some research I have done to collect the important information and the history of this painting and why it's titled as "Study after Velazquz's portrait"? Bacon's has painted this subject in 1953 and the image of the pope, especially in his face as how it's shown in the attached printed picture of my essay, we will notice that the artist organically was obsessed and influenced with another painting that's dine over 300 years earlier, apparently that painting was for "Diego Velazquez" which he claims never to have seen. Although, he did see many reproductions that work was reproduced over and over again, each time is different than the previous piece, different in terms of colors, shape, lights, and space that the artist has been working on. In each time he was reproducing the same painting, he had them pinned all over his studio walls. In comparison between the original painting of Velazquez and what Bacon's have done for the same subject, we will actually find out as we go through it's details that the figure of great authority "a pope", who in his wn realm could do about anything he might wish. However, here we see the difference and how the pope seems to be not in his full control and power; specifically the image shows us a man who is screaming and we start wondering out of curiosity what the pope is screaming at? Further more, on top of all that you've got these striations, these vertical stripes almost very thinly painted. We can't see the pope completely as we're looking through something maybe its a curtain or a drop or whatever it is that throusparent. In contrast, there is that element that's separating "you" the viewer from pope as well.

   Photo caption: “Study after Velazquz’s portrait of Pope Inncoent X” painted in 1953.     Medium.that artis’s has used on his painting was oil on canvas; measurments are (153cm x 118cm ). Located  at The Des Moines Art Center, Iowa.

Obviously, the pope screams, a moment of anguish that's frozen in time and lushes to silence so that we feel what he wants us to understand, feel his long term screams, but not hearing his despair, whist Bacon's quick and abrupt brushwork creates a sense of tension, trapping the subject in the canvas and in his inner torment. "The pope's face idea was modeled on a still from 8 ergei Eisenstein's Silent movie Battleship Potemkin 1925 in which woman was shot mid-scream during a blood bath killing." From the source *
In bacon's painting the horrified look of terror is seared on to the pope's face for eternity, hunting the subject as well as its viewers. Despite the fact that Bacon has known mostly with his distorted human figures, he was a true modernist who worked at the interstice between abstraction and figuration; capable enough of mutilating his human subjects and transporting the viewer into the realm of horror and psychosis. Sometimes we can't always rely on what artists say about their own work, but Bacon's always gives us the chance to explore and discover more of his accomplished work. The artist himself always denied that he was interested in anything at all except the formal qualities of the painting itself, and that we should not read too much into the scream, but also what we should keep in mine is that 1953 wasn't that far after the end of World War II. Remember how much we learned about the horrifying tragedy of the "Holocost", and how artists represented that tragedy in comparison if we go back and look at Francis's picture you will see these little red spatters of paint on the white park of the pope's garment, and obviously we can relate and interpret these red dots as blood. But that will guide us into more questions for example:
1 - Is he screaming at something he has perpetrated inadvertently? Or inadvertently?
2 - Is the pope screaming at something he has seen?
3 - Do you think that the pope have done something really bad to innocent people? But why?
4 - Or maybe during his time he didn't have that much of big, important and powerful authority as we would all think and especially during the World War II he couldn't done enough to help?
All of these questions and maybe more can lead us to a real dramatic subject, it's really important to find out why the artist has selected this particular topic instead of doing an opposite image of suffering and any tragic events that's involved in it by place and time . From my personal side of view I think that I haven't discovered more yet about this unique work and what could moves the viewer's attention beyond that silenced, darken, frozen composition and what else the artist himself wanted us to discover more than anything else I talked about earlier in this analysis.