Study of a Nude 1953

This is Francis Bacon's ‘Study of a Nude’, painted with oil on canvas, and it’s all about process. The colours are murky, like something dredged up from the bottom of a lake. The paint is thin, scrubbed in, with frantic, scratchy marks everywhere. Bacon's not trying to hide the making, he's showing you the struggle. The figure itself is ghostly, trapped in a cage of white lines. See how the paint seems almost corroded around the figure, as if it is dissolving into the darkness? That tension, between the body and the space, is the heart of the painting. The way he positions his figure is almost like something by Giacometti. But whereas Giacometti is searching for a kind of solid presence, Bacon is interested in the instability of the human condition. For Bacon, it’s this very ambiguity that gives the painting its power.