''Fragment of a Crucifixion'' is an unfinished 1950 painting by the Irish-born figurative painter

Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

. It shows two animals engaged in an existential struggle; the upper figure, which may be a dog or a cat, crouches over a chimera and is at the point of kill. It stoops on the horizontal beam of a T-shaped structure, which may signify

Christ's cross The True Cross is the cross upon which Jesus was said to have been crucified, particularly as an object of religious veneration. There are no early accounts that the apostles or early Christians preserved the physical cross themselves, although ...

. The painting contains thinly sketched passer-by figures, who appear as if oblivious to the central drama. Typical of Bacon's work, the painting is drawn from a wide variety of sources, including the screaming mouth of the nurse in

Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenw ...

's 1925 film ''

Battleship Potemkin '' Battleship Potemkin'' (russian: Бронено́сец «Потёмкин», ''Bronenosets Potyomkin''), sometimes rendered as ''Battleship Potyomkin'', is a 1925 Soviet silent drama film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by S ...

'' and

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

from both the

Crucifixion of Jesus The crucifixion and death of Jesus occurred in 1st-century Judea, most likely in AD 30 or AD 33. It is described in the four canonical gospels, referred to in the New Testament epistles, attested to by other ancient sources, and consid ...

and the

descent from the cross The Descent from the Cross ( el, Ἀποκαθήλωσις, ''Apokathelosis''), or Deposition of Christ, is the scene, as depicted in art, from the Gospels' accounts of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking Christ down from the cross after hi ...

. The chimera's despair forms the centrepiece of the work; its agony can be compared to Bacon's later works focusing on the

motif Motif may refer to: General concepts * Motif (chess composition), an element of a move in the consideration of its purpose * Motif (folkloristics), a recurring element that creates recognizable patterns in folklore and folk-art traditions * Moti ...

of an open mouth. Although the title has religious connotations, Bacon's personal outlook was bleak; as an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

, he did not believe in either divine intervention nor an afterlife. As such, the work seems to represent a

nihilistic Nihilism (; ) is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning of life, meaning. The term was pop ...

and hopeless view of the human condition. He later dismissed the painting, considering it too literal and explicit. He abandoned the theme of the crucifixion for the following 12 years, not returning to it until the more loosely based, but equally bleak, triptych '' Three Studies for a Crucifixion''. The painting is housed in the

Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum The Van Abbemuseum () is a museum of modern and contemporary art in central Eindhoven, Netherlands, on the east bank of the Dommel River. Established in 1936, the museum is named after its founder, Henri van Abbe, who loved modern art and wanted ...

Eindhoven Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022, The link with the biblical Crucifixion is made through the raised arms of the lower creature, and the T-shaped cross. The canvas is almost entirely stripped of colour. The T-shaped cross is dark blue; the two figures are painted in a mixture of white and black hues, the white tones dominating. Over half of the work is unpainted, essentially bare canvas. According to the theologian and curator Friedhelm Mennekes, the viewer's attention is thus solely focused "on the figure in agony on the cross, or more precisely: on the mouth, gaping and distorted in its cry".Mennekes, Friedhelm.
Francis Bacon: The Dynamic Reality of The Crucifixion
. artandreligion.de. Retrieved 1 May 2017
Archived by the Wayback Machine
The body of the chimera, or hybrid bird, is rendered with light paint, and from it hang narrow red streams of paint, indicating the drips and spatter of blood. Bacon uses pentimenti to emphasise the hopelessness of the animal's death throes. The painting contains the same white angular rails as the mid-grounds of his 1949 ''

Head II ''Head II'' is an oil and tempera on hardboard painting by the Irish-born British figurative artist Francis Bacon. Completed in 1948, it is the second in a series of six heads, painted from the winter of 1948 in preparation for a November 1949 ...

'', ''

Head VI ''Head VI'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by Irish-born figurative artist Francis Bacon, the last of six panels making up his "1949 Head" series. It shows a bust view of a single figure, modeled on Diego Velázquez's ''Portrait of Innocent X ...

'', and ''Study for Portrait'' of the same year. In this panel, the rails are positioned just below the area where the horizontal and vertical bars of the cross intersect. The rail begins with a diagonal line which intersects the chimera at what appears to be the creature's shoulder. The horizontal angular geometrical shape is sketched in white and grey in the mid-ground, and represents an early form of a spatial device Bacon was to develop and perfect during the 1950s, when it effectively became a cage used to frame the anguished figures portrayed in Bacon's foregrounds. In the mid-ground, the artist has sketched a street scene, which features walking stick figures and cars. The pedestrians appear oblivious to the slaughter before them.Zweite (2006), 114Sylvester (2000), 36

Imagery and sources

The bleakness of the painting is informed by the artist's harsh nihilism and existentialist view of life. Bacon was raised as a Christian, but according to his friend and biographer

Michael Peppiatt Michael Henry Peppiatt (born 9 October 1941) is an English art historian, curator and writer. Biography Son of Edward George Peppiatt (died 1983), B.Sc, ARCS, of Silver Birches, Stocking Pelham, near Buntingford, Hertfordshire, technical ...

, when he found he could no longer believe he was "extremely disappointed and furious, and anybody with a scrap of religious belief ... he would go for them". Peppiatt makes the observation of Bacon that "if somebody has that intensity, it's almost a faith in and of itself". The painting has been linked both thematically and in its formal construction to Bacon's 1956 work ''

Owls Owls are birds from the Order (biology), order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly Solitary animal, solitary and Nocturnal animal, nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vi ...

'', and to preparatory sketches only brought to the art market in the late 1990s.Gale, Matthew.
Two Owls, No. 2 circa 1957–61
.

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, February 1999. Retrieved 26 February 2017 The art critic Armin Zweite traces the origin of the lower figure to a photograph of an owl that Bacon found in a book on birds in motion; Bacon has replaced the bird's beak with a wide open human mouth.Zweite (2006), 85

Open mouth

Screaming mouths appear in many of Bacon's works from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. The motif was developed from sources including medical textbooks, and images of the nurse in the Odessa Steps sequence in

's 1925 silent film ''

''.Davies; Yard (1986), 18 Bacon kept a close-up still of the screaming nurse, at the moment when she has been shot in the eye. He referred to the still in paintings throughout his career. Bacon tended to draw images in series, and the Odessa nurse become an obsessive motif for him. According to Peppiatt, "it would be no exaggeration to say that, if one could really explain the origins and implications of this scream, one would be far closer to understanding the whole art of Francis Bacon".

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...

wrote that, in Bacon's screams, "the entire body escapes through the mouth".

Crucifixion

The panel is one of a number of Bacon's treatments of the biblical crucifixion scene.Sharpe, Gemma.
Fragment of a Crucifixion
".

Haus der Kunst The ''Haus der Kunst'' (, ''House of Art'') is a non-collecting modern and contemporary art museum in Munich, Germany. It is located at Prinzregentenstraße 1 at the southern edge of the Englischer Garten, Munich's largest park. History Na ...

, 2016. Retrieved 1 May 2017 He also incorporates Greek legend, notably the tale of

Aeschylus Aeschylus (, ; grc-gre, Αἰσχύλος ; c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek ...

and the Eumenides—or Furies—found in the '' Oresteia'', suggested by the broad wings of the chimera. Bacon's imagery became less extreme and more imbued with

pathos Pathos (, ; plural: ''pathea'' or ''pathê''; , for "suffering" or "experience") appeals to the emotions and ideals of the audience and elicits feelings that already reside in them. Pathos is a term used most often in rhetoric (in which it is c ...

as he got older, and fewer of his canvases contain the sensational imagery that made him famous in the mid-1940s. He admitted that, "When I was younger, I needed extreme subject-matter. Now I don't."Russell (1979), 76 According to John Russell, Bacon found it more effective to reflect violence in his brush strokes and colourisation, rather than "in the thing portrayed". The title refers to Christian

of the Passion of Jesus. Crucifixion scenes appear from Bacon's earliest works,Sylvester (2000), 13 and appeared frequently throughout his career. Russell writes that, to Bacon, the crucifixion was a "generic name for an environment in which bodily harm is done to one or more persons and one or more other persons gather to watch". The painting was commissioned by Eric Hall, Bacon's patron and, later, his lover, who in 1933 commissioned three crucifixion paintings.Davies; Yard (1986), 12 Bacon drew influence from the old masters Grünewald,

Diego Velázquez Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized June 6, 1599August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of th ...

and

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...

, as well as

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

's late 1920s and early 1930s biomorphs. Bacon said that he thought of the crucifixion as a "magnificent armature on which you can hang all types of feeling and sensation".Schmied (1996), 78 Descent from the Cross (Rubens) July 2015-1a

Descent from the Cross (Rubens) July 2015-1a

Elements of the canvas refer to Grünewald's c. 1512–16 ''

Isenheim Altarpiece The ''Isenheim Altarpiece'' is an altarpiece sculpted and painted by, respectively, the Germans Nikolaus of Haguenau and Matthias Grünewald in 1512–1516. It is on display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace, in France. It is Grünewal ...

'' and

Peter Paul Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

's c. 1612–14 ''

Descent from the Cross The Descent from the Cross ( el, Ἀποκαθήλωσις, ''Apokathelosis''), or Deposition of Christ, is the scene, as depicted in art, from the Gospels' accounts of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking Christ down from the cross after hi ...

''.Adams (1997), 179 According to the art critic Hugh Davies, the open mouth of the victim and the predator leaning over the cross link the painting to Rubens' ''Descent''. The mouth in Rubens' painting is loosely opened, but in Bacon's it is taut. The main figure's legs are folded out of view and the figure's left arm is passive in Rubens' painting, but in the Bacon's painting the chimera's legs and arms are in violent motion, seemingly wildly flailing up and down.

Cage

Horizontal frames often featured in Bacon's 1950s and 1960s paintings. The motif may have been borrowed from the sculptor

Alberto Giacometti Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and ...

, who Bacon greatly admired and often corresponded with. Giacometti had employed the device in ''The Nose'' (1947) and ''The Cage'' (1950). Bacon's use of frames has suggested imprisonment to many commentators. Writing on their use in ''Fragment'', Zweite mentions that the diagonal lines transform the cross into a guillotine.

Reputation

The religious imagery belies Bacon's atheist and nihilistic outlook. The painting contains no hope for redemption. Friedhelm Mennekes writes that in the victim's scream, "there is not even a lament of being forsaken by God. A god does not emerge for the figure jerking in mortal anguish in the painting". Sharpe identifies the tiny oblivious stick-figure passersby as the element that mostly removes the work from "a straightforward recapitulation of ancient religious iconography and into postwar modernity". Bacon was self-critical, and often destroyed or disowned his own work, including pieces held in high regard by critics and buyers. He came to dislike ''Fragment of a Crucifixion'', viewing it as too simplistic and explicit,Deleuze (2005), 19 in the words of Russell, "too near the conventions of narrative-painting". This was an issue with which Bacon struggled throughout his career: he aimed to create imagery that would be instantly recognisable, immediate and directly involving for the viewer, while also staying loyal to his creed of producing "non-illustrative painting". Bacon returned to the crucifixion theme in his 1962 '' Three Studies for a Crucifixion''. That depiction is a more oblique and less literal utilisation of the iconography of the biblical scene,Brintnall (2011), 146 but a more direct invocation of imagery of the slaughterhouse and slabs of meat.

References

Notes

Sources

* Adams, James Luther & Yates, Wilson & Warren, Robert. ''The Grotesque in Art and Literature''. Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing, 1997. * Alley, Ronald & Alley, John. ''Francis Bacon''. London: Thames & Hudson, 1964. * Baldassari, Anne. ''Bacon and Picasso''. Paris: Flammarion, 2005. * Brintnall, Kent. ''Ecce Homo: The Male-Body-in-Pain as Redemptive Figure''. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press Books, 2011. * Davies, Hugh; Yard, Sally. ''Francis Bacon''. New York: Cross River Press, 1986. * Deleuze, Gilles. ''Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation''. London: Continuum International, 2005. * Farr, Dennis; Peppiatt, Michael; Yard, Sally. ''Francis Bacon: A Retrospective''. New York: Harry N Abrams, 1999. * Peppiatt, Michael. ''Francis Bacon in the 1950s''. Yale, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. * Russell, John. ''Francis Bacon''. London: Thames & Hudson, 1979. * Schmied, Wieland. ''Francis Bacon: Commitment and Conflict''. Munich: Prestel, 1996. * Sylvester, David. ''Looking Back at Francis Bacon''. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000. * Sylvester, David. "Giacometti and Bacon". ''

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of ...

'', volume 9 No. 6, 19 March 1987 * Van Alphen, Ernst. ''Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self''. Chicago: Reaktion Books, 1992. * Zweite, Armin. ''The Violence of the Real''. London: Thames and Hudson, 2006.

External links

''Fragment of a Crucifixion''
Van Abbemuseum {{Francis Bacon (artist) Paintings by Francis Bacon 1950 paintings Paintings depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus Paintings in the Netherlands