Blurred boundaries: Francis Bacon’s portraits

Year, pages: 2019, 84 - 96

In his oeuvre Francis Bacon hints at the fact that portraiture sacrifices the subject for the sake of representation. For this reason, portraiture as a genre needs to re-determine the conditions that originally shaped it. Through an analysis of the manner in which Bacon depicts his subjects I will argue that his portraits blur the boundaries between object and subject, portrait and viewer, in order to remodel conventional notions of portraiture. Through Gilles Deleuze’s theory on Francis Bacon, I will reinterpret Bacon’s works through the prism of Buddhism, arguing that understanding the works through Buddhist practices opens the possibility of a complete transformation of preexisting concepts which traditionally shaped portrait making.

Lelik, T. 2019. Blurred boundaries: Francis Bacon’s portraits. In World Literature Studies, vol. 11, no.4, pp. 84-96. 1337-9275.

Lelik, T. (2019). Blurred boundaries: Francis Bacon’s portraits. World Literature Studies, 11(4), 84-96. 1337-9275.

Publisher: ÚSvL SAV, v. v. i.