Art as Uncontrollable Strength: Interpreting Violence in Francis Bacon’s Art Through the Gaze of Contemporary Disciplines

‘The discourse of the postmodern is the queer experience rewritten to describe the experience of the whole world.’

This statement can be referred to much of the postmodern art history criticism, but not the one of Francis Bacon. Bacon’s art has, in fact, never received sufficient attention within the discipline of Queer Theory, with the majority of criticism focusing on other aspects of the artist’s work – primarily Existentialism, as previously stated. However, the violence that characterises the scenes of homosexuality in his paintings is necessarily connected to his conception of such ‘perversion’- as homosexuality has been homophobically described by Sigmund Freud. This chapter will look at the factors that demonstrate how approaching Bacon’s art through Queer Theory is a wise way to understand it more deeply, and perhaps more closely to its original conception.
To begin with, Queer theory represents a humanistic studies’ attempt to be systematic, with the aim of de-pathologising and de-marginalising homosexuality and queerness in general. As described by Catherine Lord,

‘Queer Theory is recursive, retrieving threads of the past to weave them into a present that remains dynamic and open to change.’

It differs from gay and lesbian studies in that it employs the post-structuralist model rather than being based on a binary opposition. In fact, it aims to normalise queerness in order to transition from binarity to a scale of queerness, while also removing the term’s initial connotation of unacceptability and abnormality of the term ‘Queer’ from the public consciousness. This word can be interpreted as an umbrella term that encompasses a range of sexual and gender identities that are not considered normative and can also be interpreted as a verb that signals a critical and sceptical position about society’s status quo and the concept of normativity.

The term ‘Queer’ is used to refer not only to a specific sexual orientation and gender diversities, but also to highlight minorities who oppose dominant power systems. This term is meant to call identitarian frameworks into question. Queer Theory wants to acknowledge individual peculiarity, seeking to affirm the absence of a general model of sexuality and subjectivity – as asserted by Whitney Davis. Furthermore, Davis claimed that when applied to art history, Queer Theory does not necessarily mean determining whether or not the artist was queer himself or herself. Instead, Queer Theory involves identifying how queer desires influence artistic representation. Queer history and criticism have been produced not only by scholars but also by a widespread community of culture enthusiasts such as collectors, artists, and others. By writing this chapter, I hope to show that Bacon was one of the members of this community that contributed to the growth of the field of Queer Theory.

Paraphrasing Lord and Meyer, Queer Theory does not progress in a linear fashion towards the new and the now, which explains why one of its most significant problems is the severe lack of sources, artworks, and other evidence that queer art has existed for as long as anyone can remember, which is also the case with gay and lesbian studies. Nevertheless, as Davis points out, the problem is not with the archives, but rather with the criteria that were used to assess art history up until the twentieth century. On the other hand, as Kadji Amin adds, while disciplines such as ‘Women studies’ and ‘Black Studies’ were considered academic subjects during the twentieth century, Queer Theory was neither born nor intended to be an academic discipline in the traditional sense. In fact, scholars of this subject were initially opposed to the formalisation of its content through institutionalisation, arguing that it would be detrimental to their research. According to Amin, there are other issues with Queer Theory, the first of which is that it was initially theorised exclusively by white, middle-class European and North American academics, who focused solely on the population they saw – and wanted to see – which was primarily a white, middle-class European and North American population. As a result, Queer Theory is only considered valid and relevant in the humanitarian departments, while the rest of the academic field failing to take it into account. Eventually, this creates a lack of coherence in the academic field between humanitarian and other subjects as a result.

If Queer Theory theorization presents so many issues, how then could it be useful in enhancing Bacon’s scholarship? This question can be answered in a variety of ways, and in order to explain them in depth, I will study Bacon’s painting Two Figures (1953, private collection) [Fig.5]. To begin with, Queer Theory may be useful in analysing the work of the Irish artist because, since now, no one has explored it in this way except for Rina Arya in her ‘Construction of Homosexuality in the Art of Francis Bacon.’ According to Arya, Bacon’s scholarship has only reached out to the aesthetic aspects of his art, and never to a deep analysis of his representation and vision of homosexuality – which was an aspect he considered so important to his individuality. Even after Arya’s text, despite the obvious presence of queer themes in Bacon’s work, there has been a lack of queer studies applied to his art.

The cultural influences that acted on Bacon are another reason why it makes sense to analyse the artist through the lens of Queer Theory. Many of his paintings feature discordant elements which appear to be cut from other scenes and placed next to each other to convey specific meanings to the viewer. Dominic Janes coined the term ‘juxtaposition’ to describe this technique, which is similar to the collage. However, as the exponents of that artistic movement stated in 1936 - when they rejected Bacon’s candidacy for the International Surrealist Exhibition in London - his works did not fully belong to that movement. His artworks, in fact, did not fully belong to any other artistic movement. Although juxtaposition was a defining feature of Surrealist art, it was not necessarily unique to this movement. In reality, the juxtaposed elements in Bacon’s paintings are not reminiscent of the Surrealists, but rather of the British magazines from the period in which the artist painted, as explained by Dominic Janes. The most popular magazines within the gay community were Mat and Lilliput. They were most likely read frequently by Bacon, not only because of the presence of the juxtaposition technique in his paintings but also because of the nature of the subjects he was known for depicting.
As a matter of fact, those magazines featured many photographs of people in their underwear or completely naked, especially sportsmen. Although these pictures were aimed at the affirmation of male physical superiority and, on the other hand, women’s magazines were aimed at relegating women to the domestic sphere and the mercy of men, they ended up becoming an unofficial porn magazine for homosexuals. As a consequence, these magazines advanced to the point where they began to publish coded advertisements for gay sexual encounters. Because the bodies depicted in such magazines frequently reappear in Bacon’s paintings, it is critical to emphasise the queerness of such publications. The constant presence of outlined muscles in Bacon’s works is most likely due to his reading of these magazines, which, as previously stated, contained images of naked bodies, especially of male athletes. This collection of magazines may have contributed to Bacon’s fascination with muscular bodies. His interest specifically in the nudes in these magazines, rather than in male nude photographs in general, is reflected in the dynamism that characterises the muscularly contracted bodies he painted – a dynamism that is not present, for instance, in photographs of posed nudes. Similarly, even the colour of the bodies in many of his paintings – as in Two Figures – harks back to the granulated and blurred grey photographs of Mat and Lilliput [Fig.5]. John Russell also suggested that the musculature of Bacon’s paintings may also have been inspired by the Greek sculpture The Uffizi Wrestlers from the third century BC whose photograph was featured in a 1940s issue of Mat.

In addition to the previously discussed queer elements of Bacon’s art, a queer analysis of the Irish artist’s work is extremely relevant because Bacon himself stated on numerous occasions that being gay was the most important factor in his life. As Arya explains, Bacon defined himself as ‘completely homosexual,’ and demonstrated this in his artworks – particularly in his last pictorial ‘phase,’ in which he used to depict himself alongside his male lovers. From a socially constructive perspective, his sexuality was defined in opposition to the masculinity of his father – who, as stated in Chapter 2 - embodied the definition of masculinity to which all men of his time were required to conform in order to be socially acceptable. Paintings of naked male bodies engaged in homosexual activity first appeared in Bacon’s art at a time when the female nude – let alone the male one – was not a popular subject either. The 50s were the most difficult years of the twentieth century for gay people to live in. Identification as homosexual involved charges of mental illness, possible loss of employment, criminal punishment and eventually social humiliation – and Bacon’s production of such explicitly gay paintings demonstrated his great courage and desire for gay liberation. According to Arya, his representation of sexuality progressed through several phases, the first of which was characterised by the absence of any sexualisation of the single naked body depicted in the painting. The following phase represents the artist’s most significant step forward because it involves the representation of explicit gay scenes. From this stage onwards, Bacon attempts to explain – although most likely unconsciously – his vision and experience of the queer world of the time in which he lived through his artworks.

The painting Two Figures, completed in 1953, represents Bacon’s second artistic phase. It is explicitly a gay sex scene, with particularly violent elements reminiscent of animal mating [Fig.5]. Although he was openly part of the LGBTQ+ community at the time, he created a rather controversial image, which appears to compare homosexual sex to a bestial act. The violence of the sex depicted, as well as the impersonality of the men who performed the act, risked reinforcing public opinion’s stereotypes about gay relationships. The popular preconception confirmed by Bacon in this painting was the unnaturalness and inhumanity of gay sex, as well as the absence of love in the sexual act. The majority of the general public in the 50s saw two monsters performing unnatural actions while posing in equally unnatural manners. Despite the ostentation of his own sexuality, Bacon depicts homosexual sex in this painting as a bestial fusion, characterized by the violence that is peculiar of animal procreation, and thus inconsistent with his own proud gay persona. This inconsistency could be an expression of his unconscious, which reminded him of his father’s rejection of his queerness 27 years after he had been kicked out of his father’s house. According to reports, Bacon was a proud gay man who, on the other hand, claimed that being homosexual was a defect.

Two Figures presents recurring themes from Bacon’s paintings: the open mouth, the cage, and the blurring eyes, all of which convey new meanings in the context of Queer Theory [Fig.5]. First of all, the cry of the man in the passive position should be interpreted as a cry of sexual pleasure rather than a cry of fear or pain, as it was in Bacon’s previously analysed Pope Innocent X. The blurring of the eyes caused by the large brushstrokes can be interpreted in this painting, like in many others, as the absence of a specific and known subject – but with the possibility of identification for anyone who happens to look at the painting. Because Bacon was gay and was most likely recounting a personal experience and imprinting a personal memory on the canvas, he wants to give the viewers of the artwork a chance to identify with it – in order to declare that homosexuality, as well as other forms of queerness, is likely to be present in each of the viewers. On the other hand, the geometric structure, which has been identified as a cage, could represent Bacon’s interpretation of homosexuality. Having experienced first-hand the conditions to which homosexuals were forced to descend, especially in the 50s, Bacon could have compared them to a prison or a jail cell. However, and perhaps more importantly, his homosexuality could have literally led him to imprisonment. The cage is most likely included in Bacon’s painting to communicate how he lived his queerness in a society that did not allow him to express it – as well as his fear of going to prison simply for being who he really was.
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