REVIEW. Rudolf Schlichter and Francis Bacon, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark.

            “Fatalism in inhabiting matter that we cyclically dispose of in one way or another.”

In 1924, the New Objectivity movement German artist Rudolf Schlichter (1890-1955) paints a very small watercolor painting that first of all arouses a great discomfort in the viewer to gradually transform the feeling into wonder and curiosity. Schlichter paints a sadomasochistic scene. "The artist with two hanged women" from 1924, shows, as the title reveals, two women hanging from the ceiling by thin ropes while a paralyzed artist with frozen raised hands to his face is watching the event. The bodies are out of function. Dead matter; the result of a realized sexual fantasy that probably gave pleasure during the act to end in regret. 
Francis Bacon (1909-1992) paints an anatomy of human self-destructiveness. Unlike Schlichter, Bacon captures the intensity of the bodily experience in those moments of pain and ecstasy. In the disfigured deformed bodies and faces on the verge of disappearing in "Man with Child" from 1963, Bacon paints the living matter as unfixed. Suggestive and involuntary forms emerge from the movement through which the body tends to escape. 
Rudolf Schlichter brings us into a room where something grotesque has happened, Bacon brings us into a room where something grotesque will happen. 

Between 1900-1905, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud writes that the human personality is the product of the struggle between its destructive impulses and the search for its pleasure, he believes that anxiety stems from traumatic experiences in a person's past hidden from consciousness. 

Rudolf Schlichter shows a free-spirited appetite for the bizarre and unconventional. The women, hanging dead with well-lit boots on and wearing only underwear, suggest brothels and perhaps even prostitution. Schlichter's painting lacks shadows and movement. This composition and technique makes me think of the Belgian artist René Magritte who possessed an innovative surrealist style but refrains from adhering to the technical concepts of the representatives and thus creates an independence that strengthens his images and his artistic foundations without taking into account tendencies or inclinations of the group, his paintings are simple; they lack complications. 

The French poet, theorist, essayist André Breton, inspired by Freud's theories and analysis, writes the Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924 where he presents his revolutionary thoughts about automatic writing, the presence of dreams in everyday life and the necessity to rebel. Surrealism; a means of total liberation from the mind and from all that resembled it. To establish a precise definition of Surrealism can be difficult, but it is clear that this avant-garde movement has no best before. Imaginative scenes generated by the subconscious are a hallmark of this genre of art that embraces automatism, a technique that relies on the subconscious to spark creativity.

Francis Bacon's room is large and in movement. The anxiety is already born from the floor. A man
dressed in military green sits on his throne, it is an authority waiting for something good. A child with light blond hair stands on the left side. The child's twisted hands make me feel nervous, cautious, keep your distance, something will happen. Deformed and tormented creatures reflect the artist's pessimistic vision of what awaits man. Bacon's unique interpretations and intense personal style make it difficult to trace his influences and indeed difficult to find similar artists back in time, but there is no doubt that he studied artists from earlier eras and had great admiration for, among others, and others, Francisco de Goya, Diego Velázquez and Rembrandt as well as Surrealism's depictions of movement in film and photography, however, he responds to the challenge that photography and film art posed to painting with a singular realism capable of communicating more about existence than the photographic representation of the perceived world.

Man believes that he exercises control over his body and his emotions even though his existence is based on permanent instability. Rudolf Schlichter lived through the trauma of a First World War, Francis Bacon of a Second World War, both artists created art that reflects hard and honest feelings. In its intense and grotesque style, these two artists depict anguished human figures screaming in pain and terror and manage to bring us closer to what we really are; fatalism in inhabiting matter that we cyclically dispose of in one way or another.

2023, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark.

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Taken on: October 25, 2024

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