Wednesday 18 June 2014

Piet Mondrian Paintings And Francis Bacon Paintings

By Darren Hartley


Marking the transition from the Hague school and Symbolism to Neo-Impressionism and Cubism at the start of the 20th century are the Piet Mondrian paintings. Composed of the most fundamental aspects of line and color, they represented the universal and dynamic pulse of life.

A unique personal style was involved in the creation of dynamic Piet Mondrian paintings. Termed neo-plasticism by Piet himself, they are not based on outside artistic influences or typical techniques. Instead, they are interpretations of deeply felt philosophical beliefs of theosophy and anthroposophy. The former is a religious mysticism which sought to help humanity achieve perfection while the latter held that the spiritual world was directly accessible through the development of the inner self.

Through the provision of aesthetic beauty and breaking away from a representational form of painting, Piet Mondrian paintings were aimed at helping humanity. Starting as representational paintings, Piet Mondrian paintings evolved first into cubism, then into pure abstraction and non-representation. Eventually, the post-WWI war atmosphere of Paris allowed them to develop pure creative freedom.

The first truly original work among the Francis Bacon paintings was the Crucifixion, a small spectral painting clearly indebted to the biomorphs of Picasso. In 1944, Francis Bacon riveted the attention of both public and critics with his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. With its hot orange background and stone-colored monsters of vaguely human descent, the painting left a lasting and disquieting impression on its viewers.

Included among Francis Bacon paintings is an assemblage of meat carcasses and a mutilated, almost headless man beneath an umbrella. By 1948, Francis developed the technique of painting on the wrong side of the canvas or the unprimed side. He found the technique precisely attuned to his temperament that he continued its use till the end of his life.

Created in 1949, Head VI was one of the Francis Bacon paintings that stood apart in exhibitions, with its sensuous purple cape. It was a variation on Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, a theme exploited by Francis with obsessive intensity throughout the following decade. This dependency was manifested though the use of reproductions, which had the positive effect of encouraging Francis to take an extravagant license to his art.




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