The Animal Surfaces : The Gaping Mouth in Francis Bacon’s Work
- Submitting institution
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The University of Huddersfield
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 55
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1080/08949468.2017.1333363
- Title of journal
- Visual Anthropology
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 328
- Volume
- 30
- Issue
- 4
- ISSN
- 0894-9468
- Open access status
- Technical exception
- Month of publication
- July
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
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-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- One of the most popular motifs in Bacon’s art is the gaping mouth. These open mouths have been the subject of a number of commentaries, with scholars trying to determine the cause, especially in relation to the papal figures. This article takes an original approach by looking beyond the conventional reading of the open mouth being read as a scream, to think about the mouth in terms of a gape.
By expanding the meaning of the open mouth in Bacon to look at other explanations that take the viewer beyond the scream creates new possibilities for thinking about the expressive potential of his art as well as developing the plausible evolutionary hypothesis of the human’s proximity to the animal. Drawing on scholarship from psychology the article addresses the gape face in Bacon as a reversion to a pre-linguistic state, signalling a disintegration of the symbolic order of law and patriarchy, and crucially of language. This reading is compatible with Deleuze’s reading of the mouth in Bacon’s art as pivotal to the former’s conception of becoming-animal. The new focus on the open mouth rather than scream per se shifts the emphasis away from thinking about the cause of the cry to thinking instead about Bacon’s approach to the human-as-animal where the mouth returns to its primal function.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -