le bacon

went to a francis bacon exhibition yesterday. thought i'll post the mandatory pope thing.



in 1650 diego velazquez made above painting of pope innocent x. bacon was incredibly fascinated by this painting, since the type of depiction reflects the power gradient of that time. the coded use of colours, the dominating physical presence of the pope etc.

bacon adopted these qualities in his own paintings of the pope. he also went a step further by taking the introverted pope in velazquez' painting and letting him explode in his version, thereby extracting all that was internally hidden and repressed - aspects that velazquez wasn't able to make explicit due to the artistic restrictions of his time.



which restrictions need to be tackled next?