The value of dread

The Francis Bacon retrospective at the Met is a stunning collection of major works spanning 50 years of the artist's entire career. Many say Bacon is representative of figurative art of the 20th century. I would argue that he's actually somewhere in between figurative and abstract. The rooms are full of deforming monsters, screaming mouths, carcasses and blood. But all these images are mediums for profound emotions - fear of the abusive father, insecurity from the lack of formal training, and sorrow after the death of lovers... Ultimately, it comes to the abstract feeling of dread. Dread, or angst, as the existentialist philosophers would use, describes a non-directional intense emotion without a material threat. It's almost anxiety out of nothing. Margaret Thatcher once referred to Bacon as "that man who paints those dreadful pictures". But the painter didn't seems to find anything disturbing about it. For him, dread is part of human nature; it is the other side of truth. Confronting horror, one would have the strength to think optimistically. It's only through mortality that one could understand the full meaning of life.

SENSATION

Bacon's paintings transcend figurative or abstract representations because his subject matter is not the object but sensation itself. Sensation, as Deleuze put it, is a plane of intensities that acts directly on the nervous system before meaning or reasoned cognition (which would be called perception). It is the opposite of representation or signification. Bacon usually gave his paintings very neutral titles. I think the intention was to avoid any definite interpretations and let sensation act directly upon the viewers. The anti-narration is also exemplified in his misuse of the triptych format - the panels must be separated to break the traditional sequential arrangement, and leave the ambiguity of relationship essential to the work.

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Cruxifixion, 1944

One key method of Bacon's paintings is chance. "A mark you make suggests another mark," he described. Things just happen accidentally. In Painting (1946), for example, he started painting a gorilla in a corn field. Then he saw a preying bird. But suddenly a line suggested something totally different. He didn't prepare to paint a butcher shop, but when the valves of sensation was unlocked, a string of accidents just built up on top of one another.

Painting, 1946

Bacon did not use models for his portraits. He used photos, film stills, and magazine illustrations as visual references, but mainly painted directly with sensation. "They don't need to be there - I know them so well already. I prefer to be alone and let the paint dictate to me." No matter how distorted or altered, "it always returns to you as the person you are trying to catch." Why? This is a reinvented realism that transcends visuality and acts right on your nervous system.

Two Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer, 1968

MOTION

The figures in Bacon's paintings are always in motion: drifting, spinning, vibrating, or falling. Motion suggests the shift of space and the passage of time. More importantly, it implies the progression of becoming - a dynamic dimension that opposes representation and identity.

To paint motion, Bacon played with the conflict between contraction and expansion of space and time. As in Study for Crouching Nude (1952), the box with white lines is called space-frame. This visual machine forms psychological confinement. The spare background (solid colors or even leaving the canvas blank) intensifies the zone of isolation. But the cage actually mobilizes the figure inside - it's struggling to escape. A series of radiant strokes and vertical lines (called shuttering) dissolve and merge foreground and background, figure and setting. At the same time, the lines suggest an expanding movement, as if the soul is trying to break the space-frame and escape from the body. The series of number on the rail was taken from Muybridge's time-lapse photographs. By putting them all in one frame, Bacon contracted time with expansion of space. And on the other hand, time unfolds with spatial displacement and motion of the figure.

Study for Crouching Nude, 1952

Bacon once said, "Nine-tenth of everything is inessential. What is called 'reality' can be summed up with so much less." Motion is a means to collapse space and time from multiplicity, and sum up reality into a singular plane of sensation. By dismantling the structured tempo-spatial organization, figurative illustration abbreviate into emotional intensity.

Afterword: The visit was an intense journey. On the way out to the street, I heard a girl talking on the phone, "Oh-my-god! I had my nails done! Soooo pretty!! Ah, I have to show you right now!"

Unreal reality

Intimidated by the camera's precise documentation of reality, painting has moved away from figurativism. Now it seems contemporary photography is following the same trajectory. I am not sure if it is the need of artistic expression, or it's just simply boring to record things as they are. But I found these photographs really fascinating.

Ovilo Barbieri uses tilt-shift lenses to make real things look like models, defamiliarizing the familiar, such as the Colosseum, Times Square, and Las Vagas...

James Casebere builds table-size models and photographs them in his studio. His sources span from suburban homes to abstract architectural spaces.

Laurie Simmons also constructs models and dolls to represent the surreal American suburban life.

Cracks on the street

A big hole mysteriously appeared recently along the Regent's Canal bikepath in Islington, North London. It's Joe Hill and Max Lowry's 3D street art, installed as part of a campaign to remind bikers to slow down.


I did a little research on 3D street art. Here's a collection of a few famous artists and their amazing body of work.

Edgar Mueller (German), Mysterious Cave, London
Ice Age, Ireland
Lava Burst, Germany

Kurt Wenner (American)

John Pugh (American)
Julian Beever (English)

KRAZY, not crazy

The exhibition "KRAZY" at the Japan Society is rather disappointing. It misses a great curatorial opportunity to survey how the important and interesting subject - manga, anime, and video games - affects and in many ways defines the contemporary Japanese culture. Instead, the show is just a dry collection of illustration works, action figures, and animated films. In the center of the game room is just a Pac-man machine...

However, Atelier Bow-Wow, apparently among a generation who grew up with the influence of manga, put in some cute little things in their exhibition design. These objects seem even more obviously Japanese than the comics on the walls.

Atlantic Yards

Frank Gehry said during his 80th birthday interview that it would be "devastating" if the Atlantic Yards project was not going to happen. Now the official announcement finally came out that six years of hard work had been in vain. The replacement - a spiritless big box that looks like a warehouse, or an airplane hanger - was really a hard punch at the hearts of architects.

Nicolai Ouroussoff was all fired up, He described the developer's action as "a shameful betrayal of the public trust." It sent out the wrong message that "Architecture... is something decorative and expendable, a luxury we can afford only in good times, or if we happen to be very rich." Budget had won the "battle between budget and beauty," he said. I totally understand Nicolai's reaction, but his claim has arguably put budget and beauty in fundamental opposition. Does economy necessarily mean a sacrifice of aesthetics? What's the standard cost to be beautiful enough? Perhaps all those curved surfaces are really luxurious add-ons? Maybe developers are not the only ones to be blamed...

Look back to the last decade, we had a feast of hyper-formalism (iconically and ironically started by Frank himself in Bilbao). Architecture has reached an unimaginable level of extravagance. "The iconic gesture reflects the client's ambitions," architects would say. "We always try to understand the client's agenda and take it seriously." But now, clients demand something more cost-effective, everybody freaks out. "No, you are scrapping a striking addition to the city skyline! The cutback ruins the dynamic composition of tumbling glass shards!"

The most valuable aspect of Gehry's scheme though, as Nicolai pointed out, is its "fervent effort to engage the life of the city below." He enveloped the arena in the fabric of public urban life. But the concept of urban engagement doesn't lead to a certain form. It is about performance. It can be achieved in many ways. When we put performance back to the equation, budget and beauty may not be enemies. (Oh, Vitruvius was genius!) In fact, performance, as a common language, would provide a mediating middle ground between developer and architect, and even between personal profit and public good. From this perspective, the true offensive fact of the Ellerbe Becket design is not its ugliness (well, it is ugly), but the lack of public responsibility and neglect of urban needs.

Fameism

In Marxian economics, the sole source of profit in capitalist production is the exploitation of workers - taking the surplus value of their unpaid surplus labor. Exploitation exists because of the unequal distribution of property in society. A small minority in society, the capitalists, are in possession of the majority of capital, hence the means of production (the subjects of labor, such as raw materials; and instruments of labor, such as tools and machines). The non-property-owners (the workers, proletarians) cannot survive without selling their labor-power to the capitalists (in other words, without being employed as wage laborers).

In the world of architecture, what do you need as means of production to start your own office? Very few basic instruments: a computer, some model-making tools, maybe a printer - that's it. You can probably just do it from home. But the subjects of labor is the key. You need projects to work on. But it seems right now the majority of good projects are in the hands of a minority of starchitects. It's not wealth that determines who gets the project (some interns may come from a much more loaded family than the bosses). It's fame that draws in the projects. The non-famous cannot survive without selling their labor-power to the stars. That's why the low employees have to follow the game and endure exploitation.

Fame represents the non-monetary side of power. It's the practice of control and a monopolization of decision-making. The saddest fact is, power increases with the exploitation of the workers. Just as exploitation maximizes profit in capitalism, the hard work of the lower majority expedite the growth of fame of the few in the architectural practice of fameism.