158:, each panel shows a wall with a large open door behind Dyer. It is this doorway that emits the darkness, represented by black paint, that overwhelms and literally consumes the representations of Dyer, removing large parts of his flesh. In this work, Dyer in left wing has lost most of his torso, in the right wing the black area of flesh is removed reaching from his waist to his jaw. Both figures in the center panel have been eroded and are reduced to little more than upper body and head. Art critic Wieland Schmied said that if the panel had been set a few moments later the black would have "swallowed up entirely". Bacon first introduced this motif in his 1965
139:'s series of photographs of wrestlers –a series he often referred to– but takes the idea much further, directly linking the act of love with acts of violence. Yet the panel is quite chaste; the upper man is without genitals. Art historian Denis Farr sees their embrace as without affection, and that they are more embraced in "mortal combat". The outer wings are formed from a pair of long isosceles triangles, which contrast against the low isosceles triangle of the central image. In the outer wings, the back rectangles are flanked by inwardly facing white triangles. This compositional structure may have been influenced by
71:" completed in the following years as a memorial to his lover. The dates of the last two triptychs are included in their titles, indicating that Bacon intended them as almost diary entries into a very bleak period in his life. As such the paintings are records of how Bacon was coping with the loss of Dyer at that particular time. They are haunted and permeated by the inevitable feelings of guilt experienced by anybody who has lost a close friend to suicide.
132:
filled with senses of movement and tension. Dyer is presented as a man literally falling apart. His body is mutilated; the black border dissolves into his body in both, leaving a void in place of large parts of his torso. In contrast he seems to be melting, leaving blobs of flesh on the ground beneath him. Bacon described this effect as portraying "the life flowing out of him".
96:
Bacon never really recovered from Dyer's suicide, and never again had such a close or long-standing sexual partner. He said, "people say you forget about death, but you don't. After all, I've had a very unfortunate life, because all the people I've been really fond of have died. And you don't stop
131:
in the mid-1960s. The painted images are faithful to the photographs, except that the black background replaces the studio wall. The panels show Dyer in his underwear posing on a chair in the artist's studio. He is depicted as muscular and strong, but restless, ill at ease, and the two panels are
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118:
document the final hours of Dyer's life, but in common with the other two works in the series, internally the sequencing of individual panels defy narrative interpretation; they cannot be read from left to right, and any depiction is as desperate as an other.
149:, which also uses geometric forms to separate three figures and create wide bands. As in all of the Black Triptych's, doorways predominate, and form a menacing and foreboding presence, symbolic of death and the void the subject is about to pass through.
97:
thinking about them; time doesn't heal." He expanded further in the 1985 South Bank Show documentary stating that " are always trying to defeat death by leaving images, but it won't make any difference; we'll just be dead, though the image may live on".
113:
In this work Dyer is presented as a figure struggling in vain to survive; in the triptych of 1973 he is finally defeated, naked and vomiting into a toilet basin in one panel, in another wandering towards an open door to lay down and die. The panels in
104:, and they are part of a larger series of works painted in the aftermath, a succession of paintings that include smaller single heads of Dyer, and a number of Bacon's self-portraits that extend into the mid 80s, perhaps as far as his late masterpiece,
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60:(1909–1992). It was painted in memory of Bacon's lover George Dyer who committed suicide on 24 October 1971, the eve of the artist's retrospective at Paris's
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The center painting shows two men having sex; presumably Bacon is remembering his encounters with his lost lover. The depiction is based on
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The black triptychs are so named because of their bleak mood and due to the active role the black paint plays in each. In essence each is a
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110:. Of that work he said that people had died "around me like flies and I've had nobody else to paint but myself".
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The portraits on the wing panels are based on photographs of Dyer taken by
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Study for
Portrait II (After the Life Mask of William Blake)
36:
918:
Portrait of Isabel
Rawsthorne Standing in a Street in Soho
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Triptych
Inspired by T.S. Eliot's Poem "Sweeney Agonistes"
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Love Is the Devil: Study for a
Portrait of Francis Bacon
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Three
Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion
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Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with
Hypodermic Syringe
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The
Brutality of Fact: Interviews With Francis Bacon
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Study after Velázquez's
Portrait of Pope Innocent X
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902:Three Studies for a Portrait of Henrietta Moraes
83:Dyer and Bacon in the mid-1960s. Photograph by
910:Three Studies for a Portrait of Muriel Belcher
785:Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus
325:Farr, Dennis; Peppiatt, Michael; Yard, Sally.
64:, then the highest honour Bacon had received.
443:
961:Study for a Self-Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86
843:Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer
107:Study for a Self-Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86
769:Two Figures Lying on a Bed with Attendants
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450:
436:
226:. BBC documentary film, aired 9 June 1985.
152:As with the third triptych in the series,
979:List of large triptychs by Francis Bacon
867:Portrait of George Dyer and Lucian Freud
708:Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd version 1971
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27:
1036:
369:Francis Bacon: Commitment and Conflict
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1013:Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation
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315:. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
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416:. London: Thames and Hudson, 2006.
388:. London: Thames and Hudson, 1987.
311:Dawson, Barbara; Sylvester, David.
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190:
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400:Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self
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174:List of paintings by Francis Bacon
14:
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550:Three Studies from the Human Head
67:The work is the second of three "
402:. London: Reaktion Books, 1992.
953:Three Studies for Self-Portrait
937:Three Studies for Self Portrait
851:Portrait of George Dyer Talking
793:Second Version of Triptych 1944
737:Three Studies for a Crucifixion
574:Study for a Bullfight, Number 2
582:Three Studies of the Male Back
327:Francis Bacon: A Retrospective
229:
122:
1:
875:Three Studies of Lucian Freud
859:Three Studies for George Dyer
355:Francis Bacon (World of Art)
329:. NY: Harry N Abrams, 1999.
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996:Influences on Francis Bacon
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1049:Paintings by Francis Bacon
984:Triptychs by Francis Bacon
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883:Portrait of Michel Leiris
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499:Fragment of a Crucifixion
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48:is a large oil-on-canvas
16:Triptych by Francis Bacon
534:Study for Crouching Nude
414:The Violence of the Real
357:. London: Norton, 1971.
343:. Westview Press, 1996.
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19:Not to be confused with
824:Triptych, May–June 1973
745:Three Figures in a Room
491:Wound for a Crucifixion
313:Francis Bacon in Dublin
155:Triptych, May–June 1973
21:Triptych, May–June 1973
459:Francis Bacon (artist)
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700:Study from Innocent X
668:Study after Velázquez
518:Figure in a Landscape
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816:Triptych–August 1972
412:Zweite, Armin (ed).
341:Anatomy of an Enigma
116:Triptych–August 1972
45:Triptych–August 1972
33:Triptych–August 1972
990:The Black Triptychs
398:van Alphen, Ernst.
371:. Munich: Prestel.
339:Peppiatt, Michael.
222:. "Francis Bacon".
92:The Black Triptychs
590:Blood on the Floor
367:Schmied, Wieland.
146:Bathers by a River
137:Eadweard Muybridge
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468:List of paintings
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1054:Modern paintings
972:Summary articles
894:Female portraits
684:Figure with Meat
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382:Sylvester, David
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1023:(1998 film)
1015:(1981 book)
753:Crucifixion
601:Head series
542:Two Figures
483:Crucifixion
298:Schmied, 81
277:Schmied, 82
265:Zweite, 171
253:Schmied, 83
210:Zweite, 168
179:1973 in art
161:Crucifixion
129:John Deakin
123:Description
85:John Deakin
1038:Categories
235:Schmied,80
1059:Triptychs
964:(1985–86)
720:Triptychs
695:(c. 1954)
625:Head III
168:See also
50:triptych
39:, London
1005:Related
649:Head VI
633:Head IV
617:Head II
510:Figures
305:Sources
141:Matisse
75:Context
56:artist
54:British
52:by the
956:(1979)
948:(1973)
940:(1973)
921:(1967)
913:(1966)
905:(1963)
886:(1976)
878:(1969)
870:(1967)
862:(1967)
854:(1966)
846:(1964)
827:(1973)
819:(1972)
796:(1988)
788:(1981)
780:(1976)
772:(1968)
764:(1967)
756:(1965)
748:(1964)
740:(1962)
732:(1944)
711:(1971)
703:(1962)
687:(1954)
679:(1953)
671:(1950)
652:(1949)
644:(1949)
641:Head V
636:(1949)
628:(1949)
620:(1949)
612:(1949)
609:Head I
593:(1986)
585:(1970)
577:(1969)
569:(1968)
561:(1955)
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537:(1952)
529:(1946)
521:(1945)
502:(1950)
494:(1933)
486:(1933)
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660:Popes
185:Notes
418:ISBN
404:ISBN
390:ISBN
373:ISBN
359:ISBN
345:ISBN
331:ISBN
317:ISBN
37:Tate
143:'s
1040::
384:.
282:^
270:^
258:^
192:^
35:.
451:e
444:t
437:v
23:.
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