Bacons8/28/2023 ![]() ![]() The layered images of this enigmatic painting blend into each other, giving it a dreamlike (or nightmarish) quality. Oil on board - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom The piece profoundly influenced images of the body in post-war British art. Bacon may have been drawn to the play's themes of guilt and obsession. The figures are based upon the Furies, goddesses of revenge from Greek mythology that play an important role in the Oresteia, a three-part tragedy by Aeschylus. The perspective lines in the background create a shallow space, alluding to captivity and torture. ![]() The twisted bodies are all the more frightening for their vaguely familiar human-like forms, which appear to stretch out toward the viewer in pain and supplication. Bacon may have originally intended to incorporate the figures in a crucifixion, but his reference to the base of such a composition suggests that he imagined them as part of a predella, the scenes at the bottom of a traditional altarpiece. Three Studies launched Bacon's reputation in the mid 1940s and shows the importance of biomorphic Surrealism in forging his early style. The Old Masters were an important source of inspiration for him, particularly Diego Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (c.1650) which Bacon used as the basis for his own famous series of "screaming popes." At a time when many lost faith in painting, Bacon maintained his belief in the importance of the medium, saying of his own working that his own pictures "deserve either the National Gallery or the dustbin, with nothing in between."ġ944 Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion
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