Lauren's DFSA Research : February 2014

To get a little bit of background knowledge and try to get an idea of Bacon's point of view when painting The Screaming Pope I decided to look into his history.

Life

Francis Bacon, the artist, was born in Dublin on 28 October, 1909, the second of five children.

He left home at the age of sixteen and went to live in Berlin.

In 1928 he decided to become an artist after seeing an exhibition of Picasso’s work in Paris.

His early work (1929-1944) was influenced by Surrealism but did not gain much critical success.

In 1944 Bacon exhibited ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’ to a public outcry due to its horrific imagery. This was the key painting in the development of Francis Bacon’s work.

After painting ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’ he destroyed most of his early work as he believed that it failed to communicate the way he felt about the world.

‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’ introduces many of the characteristics associated with Francis Bacon’s art: mutilated imagery, a sense of anxiety and alienation, the triptych format, antique gilt frames with glass and subjects that relate to the Crucifixion and Greek mythology.

Bacon never painted from life - he always worked from photographs.

Photographic references that Bacon frequently referred to were Velazquez's'Portrait of Innocent X', the wounded nurse from the film 'The Battleship Potemkin', Muybridge’s ‘The Human Figure in Motion’, Clark's 'Positioning in Radiography'and medical textbooks that illustrated diseases of the mouth.

Bacon's art was seen as a metaphor for the corruption of the human spirit in the post World War Two era.

Bacon often painted variations of the same subject and sometimes revisited certain subjects many years later. ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’has a later version painted in 1988.

Francis Bacon died of a heart attack in Madrid in 1992.

The Screaming Pope

Painted in 1953

Bacon worked from reproductions and never saw the original painting by Velazquez.

He painted about forty five variations based around the subject of the Pope - The Screaming Pope being one.

Possibly inspired by Picasso for producing variations on a work from the past.

Idea

I think the idea of memories should be raw. For this project I don't want to have to fabricate anything other than reality and my theory is that the work will mean a lot more to me if I work like this - work that means more to me will allow me to put maximum effort into it and allow me to be proud of what I produce at the end. My plan is to take photos to document my first year life at university - parties, birthdays, events, class - things that I can look back at and say "yup that represented my first year." The photos will look like polaroids to make them look even more raw but to achieve this effect I want to use photoshop along with digital images. Underneath each image will be a word or phrase to describe the picture, or something that represents or relates to whatever is happening within the photo.

Display

Inspiration for displays:

I don't want to display the photographs on a mount board as personally I don't find this as interesting, as I learnt from the last photography project, so I have looked into other ways I could display. I feel like dream catchers represent me to a certain extent as they are one of the only things that I have been collecting for many years, owning about 20 different types and looks and I thought seeing as my project is personal maybe I could incorporate them into the display. I've been looking into tutorials into how to make them...

The photos would then dangle beneath the dream catcher. Throughout the strings, just like the one displayed I would place mini items that represent the memories.

Idea

My film is going to be about human wastefulness and how it is effecting the planet. It will target issues such as global warming, climate change and environmental degradation, showing what may happen to the Earth if we continue being not resourceful. Having some concerns about the well being of the planet, my aim is to get across to others the severity of the issues that we may have to deal in the future if not careful.

Three Screens

Screen one and three will be a collection of found footage clips and photographs of the action of destroying the planet, such as sewage being piped into rivers etc. These will be most likely take from news reports and other such sources.

Screen two is going to be a moving image of planet Earth. This will flicker between different periods of the Earth, beginning with the Ice Age and showing its development from there, eventually forming an image of what it will look like due to the problems we are currently creating. This screen will loop several times throughout before all screens reach an end and return to the beginning again.

At one point I would like all three screens to merge into one scene, showing a collection of stars and space. Also, I would like to incorporate text on to the screens as well, showing different statistics associated with the disasters and issues.

Visual Inspirations

How will this be achieved

Everything will be done on After Effects using a variety of different methods to animate, distort and add visual effects to already existing images. The majority of tutorials to help me with this shall be found on Youtube, Lynda and Video Copilot.

Relevant tutorial links (so far)

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/dead_planet/

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/planet_explosion/