Triptych March 1974 1974

Francis Bacon made this triptych in March 1974 using oil paints. The dominant colours are muted grays and blacks, punctuated by raw flesh tones, all smeared and smudged like looking at something through a dirty window. I can imagine Bacon’s process— the physicality of applying and manipulating the paint, how he built up layers, scraping back to reveal what lies beneath. He must have been wrestling with figures emerging, dissolving back into the ground. It makes me think of my own studio sometimes, with the struggle to get the painting to speak, the effort, and the constant recalibration. Take the central panel, the naked figure under a naked light bulb. That light is everything, a single gesture holding the painting together. I bet he’d been looking at Muybridge. Maybe he'd also been looking at Picasso's explorations of form, or the psychological depth of the old masters. It all comes through in a work like this. Artists are always talking to each other across time. Painting embraces that ambiguity and uncertainty, inviting multiple interpretations.