Francis Bacon Research

Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon's painterly but abstracted figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds. He began painting during his early 20s and worked only sporadically until his mid-30s. Before this time he drifted, earning his living as an interior decorator and designer of furniture and rugs. Later, he admitted that his career was delayed because he had spent too long looking for a subject that would sustain his interest. His breakthrough came with the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, and it was this work and his heads and figures of the late 1940s through to the mid 1950s that sealed his reputation as a notably bleak chronicler of the human condition.
Personally i find the paintings look quite disturbing, i feel the subjects in the photos are in pain due to the intense orangey red background and due to the fact the faces seem to be screaming. I also feel this as the "bodies" look bent and mutated out of shape.

 From the mid-1960s, Bacon mainly produced portrait heads of friends. He often said in interviews that he saw images "in series", and his artistic output often saw him focus on single themes for sustained periods — including his crucifixion, Papal heads and later single and triptych heads series. He began by painting variations on the Crucifixion and later focused on half-human, half-grotesque portraits, best exemplified by the 1949 "Heads in a Room" series. The colours are very un-naturalistic on the face but the hair and coat seem normal, this also looks violently mutated and disturbing.

 Following the 1971 suicide of his lover George Dyer, Bacon's art became more personal, inward looking and preoccupied with themes and motifs of death. The climax of this late period came with his 1982 "Study for Self-Portrait", and his late masterpiece Study for a Self Portrait -Triptych, 1985-86.
After looking at Francis Bacons work, I decided to give it a go. For my first triptych I stole a picture from google images of some already made photography (the rubber duck with swans) and tried to find a meaning behind to which I found it to be a sort of 'something doesn't fit in' effect in the photos. I then decided for the other two photos to go along with this theme and took a photo of a darts board in which the one that doesn't fit in, is outside of the the double 10 which the others had gone for, but is still inside the ten in the "0". This shows it is different from the others. I used depth of field in this photo in which it is very blurry at the top but slowly becomes very focused at the base, and slowly becomes a bit less focused at the dartboard. This is to show that appearance shouldn't make anyone different, I did this by putting the flights (which are coloured and designed for decoration) out of focus. I showed the message that the person which matters, I did this by making the base of the dart in focus which shows it is the most important bit in the photo. Finally I also showed that our future is unclear by making the dart board out of focus which shows that we don't in all honestly, no exactly where we are going to end up. I also think the photo was well lit and that the red, green, black and white all contrast very well with each other throughout the picture. For the last picture in the triptych I took a well lit, sharp picture of two biscuits. The message of the picture is that no matter what colour or shape people are, we are all the same things and do the same jobs and that it's what's on the inside that counts. To show this message I got two different coloured and shaped kinds of the same type of biscuit and removed the top covering in order to show the inside of the biscuit (person) is what matters and it is practically the same in both biscuits. I feel this triptych worked well over all as the same message throughout symbolising things which didn't fit in but if you look further into the photo (person) you can see that they are in essence, all relatively the same in their own ways.

My next triptych was meant to symbolise the things which I feel are most important in my life. I therefore went with my main interests and the things that make me happy which are Family, Nature and Music. In order to make this triptych effective I made sure that all the photos were well lit and sharp in places. For family I chose to do a  photograph a Christmas tree decoration which I was given as a present a while ago. I feel Christmas symbolises family due to it bringing families together when they might not see each other all the time throughout the rest of the year. Family is important to me as I know in life no matter what happens, I will always have people who care about me and will always have the memories I spent with them. The photo was very well lit with a nice effect of shine on the hat and the photo is extremely sharp overall. For the next photo I decided to show nature through taking a picture of a flower. I feel this photo worked very well as I chose one part of the flower to focus on and made it very sharp whereas the rest of the flower is very blurred and out of focus which therefore creates the effect of it looking far away when in all reality it is extremely close. The colours of what is focused contrasts very well with the angelic white of the petals as well and adds to the depth of field effect. For my final photo, I decided to photograph a guitar as it is my favourite instrument and I wanted to play with the depth of field effect again in this photo. I did this by laying the guitar down and putting focus on only the strings so that everything else was out of focus. This made the neck of the guitar look extremely  far away in which it begins to look like a long stretch of road which is ahead.