Author(s): Gilles Deleuze (tr Daniel W Smith)

Philosophy, Politics & Current Affairs

The book presents a deep engagement with Bacon's work and the nature of art. Deleuze analyses the distinctive innovations that came to mark Bacon's style: the isolation of the figure, the violent deformations of the flesh, the complex use of colour, the method of chance, and the use of the triptych form. Along the way, Deleuze introduces a number of his own famous concepts, such as the "body without organs" and the "diagram", and contrasts his own approach to painting with that of both the phenomenological and the art historical traditions. Deleuze links Bacon's work to Cezanne's notion of a "logic" of sensation, which reaches its summit in colour and the "colouring sensation." Investigating this logic, Deleuze explores Bacon's crucial relation to past painters such as Velasquez, Cezanne, and Soutine, as well as Bacon's rejection of expressionism and abstract painting. Long awaited in translation, Francis Bacon is destined to become a classic philosophical reflection on the nature of painting. Table of Contents: 1. The Round Area, the Ring 2. Note on Figuration in Past Painting 3. Athleticism 4. Body, Meat, and Spirit: Becoming-Animal 5. Recapitulative Note: Bacon's Periods and Aspects 6. Painting and Sensation 7. Hysteria 8. Painting Forces 9. Couples and Triptychs 10. Note: What is a Triptych? 11. The Painting Before Painting... 12. The Diagram 13. Analogy 14. Every Painter Recapitulates the History of Painting in His or Her Own Way... 15. Bacon's Path 16. Note on Colour 17. The Eye and the Hand Index of Paintings Index About the Author: Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was professor of philosophy at the University of Paris.