IdleRich
IdleRich
Damn I was just gonna say that.
Francis Bacon: A Brush with Violence (2017)
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Damn I was just gonna say that.
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Well-known member
Berger wrote a great negative review of The Recognitions,
Because I happen to be reviewing this 950-page novel I wish that I had time to read it again. But if I were reading it for my own interest I certainly would not do so. This fact demonstrates how specialized our cultural judgments have become, how far removed from our personal, comparatively spontaneous recognitions of what is good and bad. I think that Mr. Gaddis himself would agree with this. His title, “The Recognitions,” is probably meant to be taken on several levels, but at least one of the themes of this book is the falseness, the obliqueness of the type of recognition gained by artists in Western society.
The chief character is a painter of implied genius who fakes paintings by the early Flemish masters, or rather paints new works in their style and then forges the signature. His motive for doing this is not cash but is similar to that which drives his father, a New England clergyman, from the orthodox church to various forms of pagan sacrifices; both of them realize that true individuality is bound to be destroyed by the modern cult of personality and so seek a past order of values which places less emphasis on self-consciousness. Or at least that is their rational motive; their irrational motives are ritualistic and center around the death of the mother. A description of the dark meaning of their even darker pilgrimage takes up a large part of the book: the rest is mostly a satire on the false glitter of New York bohemianism.…
But when all has been said (and written), what does it add up to—the satire, the analysis of art, faith, and personality, the pagan sacrifices, the symbolic deaths, the Catholicism, the experimental writing? In my opinion it adds up to nothing more than an encyclopedia. Or perhaps one should say nothing less, for behind an encyclopedia there is a formidable amount of knowledge and some of the entries are bound to be useful. But an encyclopedia is not a work of art.
Reading this book and considering both the matter and the manner of it, one is reminded of some huge impressive bird, wings outstretched, neck taut, talons grasping; one is impatient to see it take to the air; and then suddenly one realizes that it can’t, that for all its fine feathers, the bones of its wings are broken. Finally one puts the book down, longing like the bird, the author, and the main characters for some quiet open space. It is a trapped book: the testament of a prisoner counting his grievances, or a miser his coins. I don’t want to be overharsh. Some of the grievances are ones we all know, and it does us good to have them defined; some of the coins are rare and valuable. But what it lacks, like all claustrophobic works of art, is imagination. It has plenty of invention and fantasy, but that is something different. Imagination in art is the ability to select significantly: to select in order to communicate a vision.
This book has no vision because the writer can see no way out of the vicious environment he describes so obsessively. The facts are piled up because they may contain a clue to the way out—but he does not find it. The book lacks perspective both socially and psychologically. And in the end it is is this, I think, that explains the awkwardness of the style in which much of it is written and its inordinate length. Because the writer is trapped, he barely envisages the existence of the reader; unlike that of James Joyce his prose is unoral, heavy, silent; unlike a great but lengthy writer like Thomas Mann he has no desire to convince by accumulation; one finds oneself after nearly 1,000 pages in exactly the same place as one started. It is perhaps for that reason that I began by saying that I felt I ought to read this book again.
Because I happen to be reviewing this 950-page novel I wish that I had time to read it again. But if I were reading it for my own interest I certainly would not do so. This fact demonstrates how specialized our cultural judgments have become, how far removed from our personal, comparatively spontaneous recognitions of what is good and bad. I think that Mr. Gaddis himself would agree with this. His title, “The Recognitions,” is probably meant to be taken on several levels, but at least one of the themes of this book is the falseness, the obliqueness of the type of recognition gained by artists in Western society.
The chief character is a painter of implied genius who fakes paintings by the early Flemish masters, or rather paints new works in their style and then forges the signature. His motive for doing this is not cash but is similar to that which drives his father, a New England clergyman, from the orthodox church to various forms of pagan sacrifices; both of them realize that true individuality is bound to be destroyed by the modern cult of personality and so seek a past order of values which places less emphasis on self-consciousness. Or at least that is their rational motive; their irrational motives are ritualistic and center around the death of the mother. A description of the dark meaning of their even darker pilgrimage takes up a large part of the book: the rest is mostly a satire on the false glitter of New York bohemianism.…
But when all has been said (and written), what does it add up to—the satire, the analysis of art, faith, and personality, the pagan sacrifices, the symbolic deaths, the Catholicism, the experimental writing? In my opinion it adds up to nothing more than an encyclopedia. Or perhaps one should say nothing less, for behind an encyclopedia there is a formidable amount of knowledge and some of the entries are bound to be useful. But an encyclopedia is not a work of art.
Reading this book and considering both the matter and the manner of it, one is reminded of some huge impressive bird, wings outstretched, neck taut, talons grasping; one is impatient to see it take to the air; and then suddenly one realizes that it can’t, that for all its fine feathers, the bones of its wings are broken. Finally one puts the book down, longing like the bird, the author, and the main characters for some quiet open space. It is a trapped book: the testament of a prisoner counting his grievances, or a miser his coins. I don’t want to be overharsh. Some of the grievances are ones we all know, and it does us good to have them defined; some of the coins are rare and valuable. But what it lacks, like all claustrophobic works of art, is imagination. It has plenty of invention and fantasy, but that is something different. Imagination in art is the ability to select significantly: to select in order to communicate a vision.
This book has no vision because the writer can see no way out of the vicious environment he describes so obsessively. The facts are piled up because they may contain a clue to the way out—but he does not find it. The book lacks perspective both socially and psychologically. And in the end it is is this, I think, that explains the awkwardness of the style in which much of it is written and its inordinate length. Because the writer is trapped, he barely envisages the existence of the reader; unlike that of James Joyce his prose is unoral, heavy, silent; unlike a great but lengthy writer like Thomas Mann he has no desire to convince by accumulation; one finds oneself after nearly 1,000 pages in exactly the same place as one started. It is perhaps for that reason that I began by saying that I felt I ought to read this book again.
luka
Well-known member
I don't think that's the reasoning necessarily. But Berger makes these assertions and you very often think, eh, where did you get that from? He presents a subjective response as though it were a window on an objective reality.
IdleRich
IdleRich
This is the best bit of the book - the contrast between the mainish character's authentic fakes and the fake originals of the NY art scene. But yeah I agree with some of his criticism. I think that the book suffered from being written over years and by the end he was basically writing a different book to the one he started, that's why it doesn't build up to a reinforcement of his ideas and he hasn't imaginatively selected.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Is this in Soho? I know it's ridiculous to think you might recognise a street in London but this reminds me of a photo I took of two mates - the trees at the end, and Bacon was known for hanging around there ofc.
If it is the same street there was loads of crackheads sitting just down from the pub we were outside. That's Soho in general ofc.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I think an image like the below is still disquieting and grotesque (the white rag for some reason -- because it looks like it's hiding eyes?), but presumably much less disturbing to eyes that grew up seeing imagery from Alien and other such horrors. I think when it was painted it must have been really shocking.
Then in this one, the figure is obviously horrible, but to me the weirdest and most uncanny aspect of the whole picture is the grass-like texture it's standing in. Because it's juxtaposed with this totally unreal, luridly orange background.
Some of bacon's images stick with you forever once you've seen them once. What do they make you feel, though? He said himself his art had no "message" to it, it was designed to induce intense sensations in viewers and that was it. That intensity of feeling might have been drained by the intensity of modern life (although that's true of all paintings).
Then in this one, the figure is obviously horrible, but to me the weirdest and most uncanny aspect of the whole picture is the grass-like texture it's standing in. Because it's juxtaposed with this totally unreal, luridly orange background.
Some of bacon's images stick with you forever once you've seen them once. What do they make you feel, though? He said himself his art had no "message" to it, it was designed to induce intense sensations in viewers and that was it. That intensity of feeling might have been drained by the intensity of modern life (although that's true of all paintings).
constant escape
winter withered, warm
Sort of a raw nerve managing to scream its way through all of our layers of organized expression. Like beneath all the usual pretenses is this sort of perennial high-pitch agony. But I'd imagine that the impression they made when they were new would've been unbearable for many people. Cutting too close to the nerve, perhaps, a nerve that has been so buried as to be forgotten about.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
What are some other acute portrayals of agony, specifically portrays that rival these in terms of rawness, directness? I admit, these would be the first that come to mind for me.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
![Bacon. Pope Innocent X. artinvest2000 .bacon_innocent-x_thumb[2].jpg](https://www.dissensus.com/data/attachments/4/4325-f08e915a859ec5249c32546df4f331ce.jpg "Bacon. Pope Innocent X. artinvest2000 .bacon_innocent-x_thumb[2].jpg")
