Study of Portrait of a man (2000) by Francis BaconJohannesburg Art Gallery
Francis Bacon is thought of today as one of the greatest British painters of the Twentieth Century, though he faced a troubled life of poor education, and extreme violence, homophobia, and alcoholism.
He faced criticism and rejection in his early artistic career, and destroyed many of his works. During the Second World War, Bacon developed a fervid, grotesque style of surrealism, populated by inhuman monsters, screaming figures, and bloodied corpses.
Some see this as reflective of both an intimate and a violent relationship with bodies. It isn't clear whether the twisted, unrecognisable face of this figure, painted in 1969, is being punched - or stroked. Bacon was no stranger to domestic violence.
Carcass of Beef (1925) by Chaim SoutineMinneapolis Institute of Art
His contemporary Chaïm Soutine was a Russian Jewish painter of twentieth century Paris. He had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and found inspiration in the still lifes and portraits of European masters such as Rembrandt, Jean-Siméon Chardin, and Gustave Courbet.
Living the life of a poor, bohemian artist in the district of Montmartre, many of Soutine's subjects were drawn from the streets and markets of Paris, including chefs, prostitutes, and carcasses.
Inspired by Rembrandt's Slaughtered Ox, Soutine's Carcass of Beef was painted in 1925, shortly after he had received a lot of confidence (and a lot of money) from the sale of 60 paintings to the American art collector Albert C. Barnes.
In an act of artistic bravado, Soutine bought the carcass from a beef market and kept the hunk of flesh hanging in his studio, where it slowly rotted. His neighbours were horrified and disgusted, and called the police. It's said that blood pooled in the corridor.
Soutine painted a number of versions, this was the largest, almost life size. The picture is dominated by the eviscerated, skinless torso. Behind it is a dramatic blue curtain, and below a pool of thick red blood.
The swirling mass of brushstrokes suggest we have just stumbled on the scene, the first witnesses of a vicious crime. With its limbs outstretched, and head decapitated, it almost appears as if we're looking at a crucified human body.
It's not hard to feel the same ambiguity between intrigue and repulsion as in Bacon's work: horror at what we've seen and the desire to see even more. The disgusting image of death, and the rich, delicious meat.
Study of Portrait of a man (2000) by Francis BaconJohannesburg Art Gallery
Bacon and Soutine never crossed paths, but it's undoubtable that Bacon, on his early visits to Paris, heard of the French painter. The Parisian art world was full of stories of the bohemian rags-to-riches artist who frightened the neighbourhood with carcasses.
Later in life, Bacon described what he admired in Soutine, calling him "a man with enormous love of painting, who never drew, who painted his pictures directly and had deliberately never developed his technique."
