Head II
Painting by Francis Bacon
| Head II | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Francis Bacon |
| Year | 1949 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 80.5 cm × 65 cm (31.7 in × 26 in) |
| Location | Ulster Museum, Belfast |
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 exhibition at the Hanover Gallery, London.[1]
The figure seems half human, half animal, and has disintegrated to an extent that, like the preceding Head I of the series, the entire upper head has disappeared leaving only mouth and jaw. The figure is set in a shallow pictorial space, and is positioned behind curtains that borrow from Titian's 1558 Portrait of Cardinal Filippo Archinto. The curtains are fastened at one point by a safety pin. John Russell sees the curtains as enclosing the figure, as if the walls of a prison or execution dock. Remarking on their dreary and drab appearance he further speculates that they seem "stiffened by fifty year's crasse of a tenth rate lodging-house; or they could be sliding shutters that has been pulled apart to admit a new victim."[2]
The painting's overall grisaille appearance give the impression of x-ray photographs, and the look may have been inspired by K.C. Clark's Positioning In Radiography, a book Bacon often acknowledged as a key source for his work. The painting contains a small arrow just below the figures mouth; the first appearance of a motif the artist was to continue using for the rest of his career.[3]
References
Notes
Sources
- Dawson, Barbara; Sylvester, David. Francis Bacon in Dublin. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000. ISBN 978-0-500-28254-0
- Farr, Dennis; Peppiatt, Michael; Yard, Sally. Francis Bacon: A Retrospective. NY: Harry N Abrams, 1999. ISBN 978-0-8109-2925-8
- Peppiatt, Michael. Anatomy of an Enigma. London: Westview Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-8133-3520-9
- Russell, John. Francis Bacon (World of Art). NY: Norton, 1971. ISBN 978-0-500-20169-5
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Francis Bacon (artist)
- Crucifixion (1933)
- Wound for a Crucifixion (1933)
- Fragment of a Crucifixion (1950)
- Figure in a Landscape (1945)
- Painting 1946 (1946)
- Study for Crouching Nude (1952)
- Two Figures (1953)
- Three Studies from the Human Head (1953)
- Study for Portrait II (After the Life Mask of William Blake) (1955)
- Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe (1968)
- Study for a Bullfight, Number 2 (1969)
- Three Studies of the Male Back (1970)
- Blood on the Floor (painting) (1986)
- Head I (1949)
- Head II (1949)
- Head III (1949)
- Head IV (1949)
- Head V (1949)
- Head VI (1949)
- Study after Velázquez (1950)
- Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953)
- Figure with Meat (1954)
- Untitled (Pope) (c. 1954)
- Study from Innocent X (1962)
- Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd version 1971 (1971)
- Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944)
- Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962)
- Three Figures in a Room (1964)
- Crucifixion (1965)
- Triptych Inspired by T.S. Eliot's Poem "Sweeney Agonistes" (1967)
- Two Figures Lying on a Bed with Attendants (1968)
- Triptych, 1976 (1976)
- Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus (1981)
- Second Version of Triptych 1944 (1988)
- Triptych–August 1972 (1972)
- Triptych, May–June 1973 (1973)
- Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer (1964)
- Portrait of George Dyer Talking (1966)
- Three Studies for George Dyer (1967)
- Portrait of George Dyer and Lucian Freud (1967)
- Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969)
- Portrait of Michel Leiris, 1976 (1976)
- Three Studies for Self Portrait (1973)
- Self-portrait (1973)
- Three Studies for Self-Portrait (1979)
- Study for a Self-Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86 (1985–86)
- Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (1981 book)
- Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998 film)
