Prints in Concrete (3)- Francis Bacon: Second Version of Triptych 1944

Prints in Concrete- Francis Bacon- Second Version of Triptych 1944 -(1988)



Looking at works of art and the profound effects they had on me. The analysis will not be geared intensely towards the works themselves, but why I feel I had such a deep response to it.


Francis Bacon- Second Version of Triptych 1944 (1988)





Date experienced: November 2006

Location: Tate Modern, UK


Tate Description:

Part man, part beast, these howling creatures first appeared in Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which Bacon painted during the Second World War. One critic described that picture as a reflection of ‘the atrocious world into which we have survived’. Bacon identified his distorted figures with the vengeful Greek Furies, while the title places them in the Christian context of the crucifixion. In this version, painted in 1988, Bacon changed the background colour from orange to blood red, and placed more space around the figures, plunging them into a deep void.

It’s not often I round a corner in a museum and am literally shocked. I had no idea I’d be walking straight into an original painting I’d always admired but only seen in images the size of a baseball card.

The first immediate impact of these works, were their sheer scale. Having never read of their dimensions before, I was astonished to see they were easily seven or more feet tall- and take up the wall of an entire room in length. One is easily intimidated being in their presence.

The attraction to red in art as stated in my look at Rothko’s Maroon series was immediate (indeed, these works were experienced in the same day). The previous version of this work from the 1940’s depended upon a burnt orange for its background. The reds behind these ‘creatures’ felt like a similar consistency as Rothko’s series: the more you observe it, the more subtlety you saw in the shades.

Strangely enough, I never interpreted the red as indicative of blood or violence, possibly from having experienced similar affecting reds just hours before. As remarked in the above quotes, the feeling of ‘falling into a deep void’ is immediately what I felt walking into the room (closest to the painting on the right). While excited, I found myself backing away at the same time. This feeling was far stronger than the repulsion of the monstrous forms in the paintings. If you’ve ever experienced the feeling of free-falling before sleep you will understand the experience I had. That kind of fall often jolts me awake for a long time, as I’ve had a great fear of that kind of experience. Jumping from a building would probably be the worst way to go in my mind.

While the distortion of flesh and fury is inherent and obvious in nearly all of Bacon’s works, that was never what really affected me. I feel more admiration at the ideas and technique than disgust at the creatures upon seeing his works. There’s always been something ‘else’ there.

I realized more about what it was while conducting interviews with filmmaker Paul Solet, on the set of his award-winning short film GRACE in 2006. Much of the film’s color scheme, despite being a highly disturbing film, did not match the usual desaturated, decayed, rotten-wood palette of nearly every horror film of the past twenty years. It’s bright and utilizes vibrant purples, reds, pinks, greens to knock the viewer off balance.

In our interview he mentioned the production design’s color scheme was influenced by Francis Bacon. And how “default morbid mode” in modern horror cinema depends upon “dark.” From the time of day to the lighting scheme to the look of every set. But Bacon often does an opposite; using brighter colors, crazy pinks and salmons and vibrant purples and reds to knock the viewer off-kilter even more, as we don’t expect these “pleasing” colors to be utilized in an image that can provoke anxiety, torment and fear.

I’d written previous articles on horror films that have not only been considered modern or past classics, but are considered some of the scariest of their generations; often this was something I saw filmmakers employ in their visual arsenal. Two quotes from a recent documentary of The Shining stand out and clarify my point:

“The Shining is the perfect example of a horror genre movie that does not employ the classical horror genre visual elements.” -Janusz Kaminski, cinematographer

“I think the thing about it is that (Kubrick) creates a setting that has a certain kind of peacefulness that belies the story that he’s telling.” –Caleb Deschanel, cinematographer

Bacon’s color schemes, and several great genre filmmakers(often ones who had not helmed horror films before) step outside the box and in doing so, worked on my nerves even more. We all fear similar things, but it takes a true talent to bring you to the same place through such unconventional approaches.

Grace is (c) 2006 Paul Solet/Gracefilm, LLC.


-Adam Barnick

Prints in Concrete (2)- Rothko: Black on Maroon/Red on Maroon

Prints in Concrete- Rothko: Black on Maroon/Red on Maroon series

Looking at works of art and the profound effects it had on me. The analysis will not be geared intensely towards the works themselves, but why I feel I had such a deep response to it.

Mark Rothko Painting Exhibit -Black on Maroon/Red on Maroon series

Date experienced: October 2005

Location: Tate Modern, UK

Rothko’s Black on Maroon/Red on Maroon series.

Description of series:

Mark Rothko saw these paintings as objects of contemplation, demanding the viewer’s complete absorption. They were originally commissioned for a restaurant, but Rothko soon realised that their brooding character required a very different environment.

In the late 1950s, Rothko was commissioned to paint a series of murals for the fashionable Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building on Park Avenue, New York. He set to work, having constructed a scaffold in his studio to match the exact dimensions of the restaurant. However, the murals were darker in mood than his previous work. The bright and intense colours of his earlier paintings shifted to maroon, dark red and black.

Rothko was influenced by Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in Florence, with its blind windows and deliberately oppressive atmosphere. Rothko commented that Michelangelo ‘achieved just the kind of feeling I’m after - he makes the viewers feel that they are trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall.’

Recognising that the worldly setting of a restaurant would not be the ideal location for such a work, Rothko withdrew from the commission. He finally presented the series to the Tate Gallery, expressing his deep affection for England and for British artists, especially JMW Turner. All nine paintings are included in this display. Perceived, as the artist intended, in reduced light and in a compact space, the subtlety of the layered surfaces slowly emerges, revealing their solemn and meditative character.

Click here for complete images and information on this room’s exhibit.

Familiar with Rothko’s work on a surface level, what this exhibit taught me is how seeing an image in a book of art, or an online photograph, becomes borderline pointless once one has experienced the works themselves in person. Images are included here just as reference.. but the subtlety is only properly communicated in the presence of the authentic paintings. No photograph or book print can truly capture shades and texture.

The immediate size of the works, is what is still a large room despite the museum deeming it compact, drew me in. The slightly reduced lighting scheme of the room took a few minutes to adjust to, and slowly bring out the color shifts in the paintings.

This was another exhibit I probably spent an hour in. Looking for the best distance to view these works, I noted my immediate attraction to red which has been a constant since childhood. And yet it isn’t a color that fills my life. I never wear it, my living space barely has any in it. And yet when I encounter it I’m drawn in. Often in modern stylized films I find people have used red the same way..it only shows up to make a specific point and is never placed throughout a film. The Sixth Sense being the most obvious example that comes to immediate mind.

Slowly letting your eye match the light level, and letting your mind adjust and drift upon the multitude of color shifts, from one to another or from a darker to a lighter shade of red (or the dominant color I was witnessing)…brought a certain kind of focused peace. AFTER a feeling of being subtly trapped, as remarked above. Though it is possible that I walked in expecting to feel that having read the description above, which is printed on the wall as you enter the space.

I remarked in my previous ‘Prints in Concrete’ post of the melancholy feeling Dictio Pii's music contained of days and seasons rolling by, slowly and yet quickly.. Here I felt as if I was watching the graduation of a sunset's color change, but simply accepting and understanding this is something that is meant to happen and things will work out in my favor. The colors only slightly resemble the natural event…but that was the eventual image and feeling I’d settled on from contemplating what was in front of me. Thinking deeply, but completely at peace.

.

The rolling changes of color and density in a storm cloud was another image that came to mind. It felt as if passing through a storm cloud would bring you to this relaxed state; much like the often vivid sunsets appearing after a violent storm clears the sky. I was locked in by a door which was illusory, and composed of the same thickness as a cloud. All I had to do was think/walk through it, and rest on the other side. Often this room’s color palette is described as brooding.. was I not seeing it, or was I SO used to being in a brooding state at the time that this was what produced the ‘comfort?’ That is something I still contemplate. Regardless, I file the experience under positives.

While most rooms in a museum are naturally silent and reverential, I did note that this may have been the quietest room I had been in all day. It’s also possible that the noise levels were the same as any other room; but the level of contemplation I was at had turned the world’s volume down.

-Adam Barnick

Prints in Concrete (1)- Dictio Pii

PRINTS IN CONCRETE – Dictio Pii

Looking at works of art and the profound effects it had on me. The analysis will not be geared intensely towards the works themselves, but why I feel I had such a deep response to it.

Markus Schinwald’s film exhibit- Dictio Pii

Date experienced: October 2005

Location: Tate Modern, UK

My second visit to the Tate Modern contained this experience: in one of the film rooms I was drawn in by a deeply haunting, repetitive piece of music, laced with a voiceover which kept the same text, but spoken by different people. This is a combination of several descriptions of what I experienced, trying to give a complete summary of a non-narrative:


Dictio pii (2001)
The mysterious and obsessive behavior of seven characters is portrayed in this enigmatic series of films by Austrian artist Markus Schinwald. Schinwald's highly choreographed films follow no logical narrative. Instead the artist weaves together fragmentary stories of disjointed emotions and longings, deliberately invoking narrative stereotypes and cultural clichés. This work, Dictio pii (2001), consists of five films, screened consecutively without any apparent break between them. The action takes place in a vacant hotel where seven characters in various forms of physical constraint move in and out of view with no discernible motivation. Doors open, strangely garbed figures enter through them only to vanish again in the next room. An old lift attendant incessantly brushes dust off his jacket. An aging diva in a white dress with a fetishistic prosthesis around her neck smokes one cigarette after another. A young man perpetuates his artificial smile by gripping a taut silver chain between his teeth. A girl's body inflates pulsatingly, and a man lets a woman bind his arms. The images are accompanied by a male voice, intoning a cryptic philosophical monologue. No individual film contains a cohesive story, although the same characters re-appear throughout the sequence. Schinwald has worked in sculpture, dance, fashion, film, and performance. Much of his work alludes to psychoanalysis, and a fascination with the power of gestures. In Dictio pii, the repeated, and more or less meaningless sequences of actions performed by the various characters, create the chilling and compelling mood of a dream or nightmare.

I know I tried my best to transcribe the repeated voiceover dialogue, seemingly coming from the minds of each inhabitant. Though my details weren’t exact, I have found the speech online:

We are the perfume of corridors
Unfamiliarised with isolated activity
Traitors of privacy.

We are Utopian craftsmen
Scope heeled diplomats, pretty beggars
Not the product of poverty
We don't take from anyone.

We are pillared by mild sadness and polymorphic history
Eternally skeptical,
But We Believe.

We are immortal volunteers
Living in the sensation of being everything
And the certitude of being nothing.

We are just an outline.

We disband prompted paths of movement
Extend our bodies,
Become abysmal dancers.

We are illiterate of perfection, following the curves of belief.

Interested only in the gestures of bending.
Scaffolded postures,obscene geometry.
Frozen irony.

We are deranged.

Run in a continuous loop, purposefully obscuring a beginning/ending, later I found this was its purpose:

If I were to make a movie, then it would probably tell a story. My films, however, especially Dictio Pii, do not have a beginning or an end. They only really consist of a middle part. It’s a kind of pseudo-narration in which certain acts are alluded to, but not carried out; it’s a kind of artificial ruins, as though one had removed the scenes from the script that were moving the plot forward, just taken them away and left the rest. -M.S.

And yet the hotel connects them all, even if emptied of purpose. Apt, considering how a hotel is a temporary resting ground where none call home.

I spent, I believe, a full hour in the exhibit. It could have been longer. I am not sure how many people walked in and out of the exhibit, though many stayed for a period coming close to mine.

Its immediate conscious attraction was absolutely its soundtrack. Two long strings of music that seem to carry off and echo until they are replaced by new variations of the same note… eerie, haunting, longing, melancholy. If the aftereffect of throwing a rock into a pond had its own sonic signature besides its surface sound, it could be this track. Slow, liquid, flowing, slowly dissipating.

The most recent comparison I can give it are the tracks contained in composer Mark Isham’s soundtrack for the 40’s set noir, The Public Eye..which are also full of longing, summarized by the feeling of walking down a long alley alone at night while a city sleeps. (Search itunes for “The Public Eye” and you’ll hear the comparison if comparing it to Pii.)

This was and is a favorite piece of music for me, connected to deeply emotional times in my life. Naturally there has been an unconscious reminder of these times.

This music/soundscape of Dictio Pii also suggested to me the consistent passing of days, watching the sun come up and descend as we rush through our lives(even though it also suggests such slowness and stillness). Often I can feel the world is passing me by, and moving on without me when I feel I'm not making progress in life. In a way, that perfectly ties into what Schinwald states above, that his films seem to inhabit a middle ground where the elements moving the plot forward had been removed. The character(s) in this film certainly feel like they were left there, and there's a shocking sense of emptiness in the broader shots of the hotel. The people, and their purposes, moved on. Only these characters/symbols remain.

Constriction, paralysis, and being trapped in an open space are themes the visuals immediately suggest. “Trapped” is another theme I’ve found myself to be obsessed with, in creative work and in life. Whether trapped financially, emotionally, mentally, I’ve experienced/observed it in various degrees as we all have. Characters/symbols in Dictio Pii are imprisoned in repetition; whether through gestures, phrases, or poses.

I realized it was the body language that really kept me in that room, though. Some time has gone by with me pondering just why.

After some research into the artist recently I stumbled upon a breakthrough of sorts; unfortunately it’s not as to why this particular instance haunts me, but what it is: Schinwald’s work touches on (while I believe it's not intended as a direct expression of) Freud’s theory of The Uncanny, which until this week I had not read a proper articulation of.

The concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange. Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize.

For myself, it’s much more of an opposing balance of rationalization and rejection. I was uncomfortable in that room and that’s also a reason I stayed.

Over the years, through articles I have written and films/stories I have kept returning to, is a deep-seated fascination and fear of this subject. A human figure doing anything but learned, ‘human’ behavior or movement patterns is something I have always found compelling and deeply disturbing. Filmmakers like David Lynch have repeatedly tapped into this; his symbolic doppelgangers in the third and final episodes of Twin Peaks could be the best visual depictions of this; though any time something that touches on The Uncanny has crossed my path, I’ve gravitated towards it. I studied books on the paranormal as a teen; often in ‘eyewitness reports’ of strange beings are reports of ‘humans’ moving in ways they shouldn’t, with no context, or communicating in a way that suggests an imitation of English, and not an articulation. The 2002 adaptation of John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies hints at elements the novel depicts; characters that look human but are "wrong." Entities that repeat the same phrase for an hour.













Lynch and Schinwald both depict through their choreography, a world where otherwise banal situations come off as quite alien and disturbing. Both feel expert in their depiction of psychic or emotional states manifested in their physical equivalent. And yet Pii doesn't feel an homage or tribute to Lynch. Though it's the feelings of the Uncanny, combined with the haunting music, and its multilayered depictions of 'trapped' that have made me return to the memories of experiencing Dictio Pii again and again..

Brief interview with Markus Schinwald re: the uncanny and Dictio Pii

Short, small sized clip of Dictio Pii intended to highlight the soundtrack
(click on the middle white stripe, under 'projekte' click on Dictio Pii)

Larger, low resolution version of the same clip- direct access



-Adam