Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
The Black Triptychs
The Black Triptychs are a series of three triptychs painted by the British artist Francis Bacon between 1972 and 1974. Bacon admitted that they were created as an exorcism of his sense of loss following the suicide of his former lover and principal model, George Dyer. On the evening of 24 October 1971, two days before the opening of Bacon's career-making retrospective at the Grand Palais, Dyer, then 36, alcoholic, deeply insecure and suffering severe and long-term depression, committed suicide through an overdose of drink and barbiturates in a room at the Paris hotel Bacon had allowed him to share during a brief period of reconciliation following years of bitter recrimination.
Bacon, a near-alcoholic himself, felt an acute sense of mortality and awareness of the fragility of life after his former lover's death. This awareness was heightened by the death of many other close friends during the following decade. The most acute paintings after the loss of his friends are considered to be the many images of Dyer, including the three "Black triptychs", Three Portraits: Posthumous Portrait of George Dyer, Self-Portrait, Portrait of Lucian Freud of 1973, and numerous heads painted within three years of 1972.
The triptychs show, sequentially, the moments before, during and after Dyer's suicide. The scenes are not represented linearly; they do not always read from left to right. Each shows a comatose man, collapsed or dead near the hotel room's lavatory seat. In most, Dyer is followed by black horizontal fleshy winged creatures, raw and red/pink blobs of dying flesh, or by painterly arrows. These devices act both as pointers to the depravity and tragedy of the scene and as manifestations of Bacon's guilt at the death of an emotionally dependent friend.
Bacon met Dyer—in an often repeated but likely fictitious story—when Bacon caught the younger man breaking in through the roof of his flat in a failed burglary. Dyer was then in his early 30s, tall and athletic, and largely uneducated and from an impoverished East London background—all of which appealed to Bacon's taste for rough trade. There was an immediate connection between the two men, and from the mid-1960s Dyer became Bacon's principal model and muse. However, while Bacon's fame grew and critical attention of the successful portraits of Dyer brought the younger man a degree of fame and notoriety, the focus on Bacon as the star of the art world overshadowed Dyer's neediness, and he inevitably came to see himself as just another associate and hanger-on.
He barely understood or liked the older man's portraits, even though they were the sole reason he was tolerated and allowed to drink with Bacon's Soho circle of friends. He admitted of the paintings, "I think they are really horrible and I don't really understand them." When insecurity set in, Dyer defended himself by drinking from when he woke until collapsing.
Dyer quickly grated on Bacon's art-world friends, who were by then his only friends, but for whom he had lost whatever charm he had begun with—not much, they believed. Bacon tired of the routine of carrying Dyer emotionally and often physically home. Dyer planted cannabis in Bacon's Meuse and rang the police after one occasion. After a later attempt during a visit to New York when Bacon tried to end the relationship, Dyer threatened to jump from a skyscraper, and police again became involved.
Bacon said, "He became totally impossible with drink. The rest of the time, when he was sober, he could be terribly engaging and gentle. He used to love being with children and animals. I think he was a nicer person than me. He was more compassionate. He was much too nice to be a crook. That was the trouble. He only went in for stealing because he had been born into it, into that whole East End atmosphere where it's expected of you. Everybody he knew went in for it. If he'd had any discipline, he could have got a job easily, because he was very good with his hands. I got him something with my framer - he was going to learn gilding, which pays very good money. But he didn't make anything of it. I can understand that it's much more exciting to steal than to go out to a job every day, but in the end he did nothing but go and get completely drunk. In that way, my life has been a disaster. So many of the people I've known have been drunks or suicides, and all the ones I've been really fond of have died in one way or another. And it's only when they're dead that you realize just how fond of them you were."
When the relationship finally lost its spark and faded out, Dyer found himself adrift and alone, and descended into full-blown alcoholism, supplemented by anti-depressants and occasional amphetamine abuse. His dependency on Bacon continued from the late 1960s until 1971, when feeling pity, Bacon invited his former lover to attend his retrospective in Paris. Though dry at the time, Dyer was overwhelmed by the occasion and took refuge in quantities of drink and pills with which his body was no longer able to cope.
Hub AI
The Black Triptychs AI simulator
(@The Black Triptychs_simulator)
The Black Triptychs
The Black Triptychs are a series of three triptychs painted by the British artist Francis Bacon between 1972 and 1974. Bacon admitted that they were created as an exorcism of his sense of loss following the suicide of his former lover and principal model, George Dyer. On the evening of 24 October 1971, two days before the opening of Bacon's career-making retrospective at the Grand Palais, Dyer, then 36, alcoholic, deeply insecure and suffering severe and long-term depression, committed suicide through an overdose of drink and barbiturates in a room at the Paris hotel Bacon had allowed him to share during a brief period of reconciliation following years of bitter recrimination.
Bacon, a near-alcoholic himself, felt an acute sense of mortality and awareness of the fragility of life after his former lover's death. This awareness was heightened by the death of many other close friends during the following decade. The most acute paintings after the loss of his friends are considered to be the many images of Dyer, including the three "Black triptychs", Three Portraits: Posthumous Portrait of George Dyer, Self-Portrait, Portrait of Lucian Freud of 1973, and numerous heads painted within three years of 1972.
The triptychs show, sequentially, the moments before, during and after Dyer's suicide. The scenes are not represented linearly; they do not always read from left to right. Each shows a comatose man, collapsed or dead near the hotel room's lavatory seat. In most, Dyer is followed by black horizontal fleshy winged creatures, raw and red/pink blobs of dying flesh, or by painterly arrows. These devices act both as pointers to the depravity and tragedy of the scene and as manifestations of Bacon's guilt at the death of an emotionally dependent friend.
Bacon met Dyer—in an often repeated but likely fictitious story—when Bacon caught the younger man breaking in through the roof of his flat in a failed burglary. Dyer was then in his early 30s, tall and athletic, and largely uneducated and from an impoverished East London background—all of which appealed to Bacon's taste for rough trade. There was an immediate connection between the two men, and from the mid-1960s Dyer became Bacon's principal model and muse. However, while Bacon's fame grew and critical attention of the successful portraits of Dyer brought the younger man a degree of fame and notoriety, the focus on Bacon as the star of the art world overshadowed Dyer's neediness, and he inevitably came to see himself as just another associate and hanger-on.
He barely understood or liked the older man's portraits, even though they were the sole reason he was tolerated and allowed to drink with Bacon's Soho circle of friends. He admitted of the paintings, "I think they are really horrible and I don't really understand them." When insecurity set in, Dyer defended himself by drinking from when he woke until collapsing.
Dyer quickly grated on Bacon's art-world friends, who were by then his only friends, but for whom he had lost whatever charm he had begun with—not much, they believed. Bacon tired of the routine of carrying Dyer emotionally and often physically home. Dyer planted cannabis in Bacon's Meuse and rang the police after one occasion. After a later attempt during a visit to New York when Bacon tried to end the relationship, Dyer threatened to jump from a skyscraper, and police again became involved.
Bacon said, "He became totally impossible with drink. The rest of the time, when he was sober, he could be terribly engaging and gentle. He used to love being with children and animals. I think he was a nicer person than me. He was more compassionate. He was much too nice to be a crook. That was the trouble. He only went in for stealing because he had been born into it, into that whole East End atmosphere where it's expected of you. Everybody he knew went in for it. If he'd had any discipline, he could have got a job easily, because he was very good with his hands. I got him something with my framer - he was going to learn gilding, which pays very good money. But he didn't make anything of it. I can understand that it's much more exciting to steal than to go out to a job every day, but in the end he did nothing but go and get completely drunk. In that way, my life has been a disaster. So many of the people I've known have been drunks or suicides, and all the ones I've been really fond of have died in one way or another. And it's only when they're dead that you realize just how fond of them you were."
When the relationship finally lost its spark and faded out, Dyer found himself adrift and alone, and descended into full-blown alcoholism, supplemented by anti-depressants and occasional amphetamine abuse. His dependency on Bacon continued from the late 1960s until 1971, when feeling pity, Bacon invited his former lover to attend his retrospective in Paris. Though dry at the time, Dyer was overwhelmed by the occasion and took refuge in quantities of drink and pills with which his body was no longer able to cope.