Kyle Roundtree

Birth of the Modern

Draft 1
3/13/17

Gay Bacon

My interest in Francis Bacon began when I first took painting

classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. Bacons work spoke to me in

ways that no other artists work had. Being a fan of the way surrealism

abstracts reality and the figures that lay within the composition it only

made sense for me to be drawn to Bacons work. His paintings are in

your face yet reclusive in nature, minimal yet deep, grotesque yet

gorgeous. My teacher spoke to my class only on the aesthetic value of

Francis Bacons work from his technique to use of color but never

delved any deeper. I wondered, did Bacon have a greater agenda at

hand beyond making retinal art? Did he reject or embrace

society and art during his career? Did the perception of

sexuality in society have an effect on his work? I hypothesized

that; yes, Francis does have a greater agenda for his paintings based

on how coveted his work is by art enthusiasts. Through my research I

found that through being homosexual, Bacon had a predisposed

unprejudiced view on sexuality and embraced the post-

heteronormative wave in art and society. Due to homosexuality being

outlawed in Ireland and England, and the lack of parental approval, he

was forced to repress his sexuality most of his life. It seems as though

Bacons bottled up sexuality reached capacity and exploded in a grand

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gesture of creativity and celebration of homosexuality and the male

figure.

An SLC tutor guided me to the Otis Library Database where I

searched the artists name found and article titled From Male

Pathological to Male Positive: The Engendering of a Post-

Heteronormative Gaze in Francis Bacons and David Hockneys

Depictions of Men in the 1960s. I had never seen the word

heteronormative so I searched Proquest through the Otis database to

define it. According to Alejandra Matamala, heteronormativity is

defined as The cultural belief that men and women possess naturally

complimentary drives, needs, and roles. Based on the title of the

article I found and prior knowledge of Bacons sexual orientation so I

knew right away that he did not prescribe to this ideology. Generally,

male artists depiction of men fruitfully draws attention to how men

see themselves (Gouws 181). This leads the male spectator at an odd

point where he must for a split second view the attractiveness the man

that lies before him. This led me to believe that Francis goal with his

work was to naturalize the homosexual gaze. Many artists restrained

their expression of their sexuality the time. For example, Keith Vaughan

depicted homosexuality in his art in an ambiguous and diffuse

fashion, often with recourse to the homoerotic. Vaughans studies of

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men exercising focused on the strength and virility of the male nude,

and were erotically charged without being overtly sexual (Arya 44).

With his contemporaries restraining or altogether avoiding the notion

of sexuality in their work, this left uncharted territory for Bacon to later

subversively pursue in his career.

Although from Ireland, Francis spent a majority of his career in

London a place where men who desired to express their sexuality often

found a haven. In London, it was easy to find other gay men, and

there were many secluded places in which men could engage in

relations with each other without being caught (Siegel). As prominent

as it may have been, homosexuality was a criminal offense in London

in the 1960s, which, I believe, drove Bacon to pursue his goal or

naturalizing the homosexual gaze in his work more persistently. Bacon

drove his goal home by embracing the male figure in works like Three

Figures in a Room (1963). Dennis Gouws says these paintings

represent an engendering of a post-heteronormative gaze that offers

a male-positive, rather than a male-pathological, depiction of men. To

summarize, Gouws defines being male-positive as rejecting the

misandry of the 1960s in London to develop a blank canvas for the

male and masculinity to be celebrated rather than scrutinized. Gouws

explains that men are typically viewed as pathological, or inherently

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being wired wrong, thus giving us the term male-pathological. To

reject this idea and present each man as a unique and individual case

is the essence of male-positivity and Francis Bacons work. This highly

intellectual and analytical approach to homosexuality in Bacons work

is what made him stand out amongst his contemporaries who

approached homosexuality much more subtly in their work to avoid

harsh criticism.

I later learned that throughout the course of his career, Bacon

became more experimental with his work and began to explore

homosexuality from broader horizons. While his work gained more

notoriety, the true messages behind his pieces were continuously

swept underneath the rug. Sylvester, who was Bacons primary

interviewer, intentionally deflected attention away from the sexual

themes going on in the artwork to maintain a positive reputation and

image for Francis. For example Sylvester wrote, such motifs as

screaming bloody mouths were seen as harmless studies in pink, white

and red, instead of sexualizing them by likening them to orifices. It

makes sense for Sylvester to avoid these motifs, as homosexuality was

still illegal in London at the time (Arya 45). This led me to the

conclusion that rejection of homosexuality in London at the time is

what made Bacons work so revolutionary. Based on this, one can

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assume that Bacons work and message would be far less potent in the

context of the predominantly sexually liberated modern London. On

the contrary, when legislation was passed in 1967, which liberated the

sexuality of Londoners, Bacon put out the message laced and socially

conscious Two Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer (1968). In this

painting Francis is acknowledging the emergence of homoerotic

magazines and advertisements on male desire and presents men as a

singularity to be dissected sexually from a neutral standpoint as

apposed to a heteronormative one (Gouws 182). Works like this

challenged the viewer to do more than recognize topical formal

borrowing from popular culture because [these paintings] record the

expression of a male desire evident in the artists biography and in his

approach to representing the male body (pg. 183). This feeling is

most evident in Bacons Jet of Water (1988). In this painting, Bacon

covers the composition with a mark symbolic of male ejaculate on the

canvas, a very subversive decision. While seemingly meant to provoke

a feeling disgust or uncomfortability in the heteronormative viewer,

this painting is more of an expression of liberation happiness in Bacon.

Male orgasm a generous, giving indicator of pleasure and life, and it is

trace convincingly mens unselfish contribution to reproductive

pleasure.
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To the heteronormative, it would seem Bacon wasnt

seeking anything logical with his work beyond aesthetic value and

retinal art. To neglect the underlying progressive sexual themes of

Bacons work is only evidence of the naivet of the viewer, who I

myself was before being exposed to Francis Bacons greater agenda

with his artwork: to highlight the positivity in masculinity and show that

men carry within their bodies the potential for a unique celebratory

pleasure that offers much more beauty and productive potential than is

usually evident in heteronormative prescription (187). The perception

and taboo of homosexuality in Great Britain early on in Bacons career

in conjunction with the lack of intellectual analysis of his sexuality by

his contemporaries led to paintings by Francis Bacon that embodied

the post-heteronormative wave in art and society.

Works Cited

Arya, Rina. "Constructions of Homosexuality in the Art of Francis

Bacon." EBSCO Host. Journal for Cultural Research, 1 Jan. 2012.

Web. 20 Apr. 2017.

Eaton, Asia A., and Alejandra Matamala. "The Relationship between

Heteronormative Beliefs and Verbal Sexual Coercion in College

Students." Archives of Sexual Behavior 43.7 (2014): 1443-57.

ProQuest. Web. 20 Apr. 2017.

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Gouws, Dennis S. "The Engendering of Post-Heteronormative Gaze in

Francis Bacon's Depictions of Men." International Journal of the

Arts in Society 5 (2011): 181-86. 5 Nov. 2011. Web. 19 Apr. 2017.

Siegel, Arthur. "Homosexuality in 1960s London." The Erpingham

Camp. N.p., 11 Dec. 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2017.