Written by Michael Chan 2007.
M. Scott Peck said, “The Life is Difficult” on the first line of his book “The Road Less Travelled “ which I read in 1995. At the very first time I saw this sentence, I was shocked. This sentence blinks my mind. We need to truly understanding and accept it, and then life is no longer difficult. This means to me that we need to learn how to enjoy suffering so that our life will become great. I am no truly understood at that time. Alongside with my growing of age and absorbing more and more difficulties in life – body, health and soul, I become more and more understood and accepted. More I accepted then I more become enjoy my life, especially I can express them fully and freely in my artwork like Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. As a suffering body bearing with a strong willingness to become an artist, me, myself got the illness two to three years ago, that my blood sugar stay high because of which one of my organ inside my body not giving enough specific substance to dilute the sugar completely. This will result in create problem to my other organs inside my body like heart, kidney, eyes etc. So, I need to take large sum of medication everyday in long-term medical treatment till the end of my life in western medical means to prevent the further suffering of other illness appeared too early to me. I am forty and it is too early for this happen this now. That means this kind of illness cannot be recover in any means but need my hard practicing of acceptance of it and myself as a long-term illness sufferer. As per my special personal experiences in related to this topic “suffering body”, inside this essay, I would like to investigate that how they enjoy their journey and how their work that fall into this topic – Suffering body through their treatment of arts and handling their mind to diverted negative substances into creativity.
Inside Francis Bacon’s paintings, I have seen a lot of his studies in human body, especially male body. I believe that male image have an important influence in his life. I through this direction and found that bacon’s father was an army captain and he was also a grandson of an army general. As mention by the curator – David Sylvester inside this catalogue of Francis Bacon exhibition in Hyward Gallery, London, 5 February to 5 April 1998, Francis grew up in fear of his father and depend live with another parent separately from his father. This is a Trauma . This is a truth of Francis life and this also becomes an important ground stone of his painting – male. He did the acceptance thoroughly and smoothly inside his work.
Inside my observation, I saw his practice through using male body and male image as the interface of his own representation of occasion and viewpoint towards the world around him. We can saw lots of deforming, cries, horrified, faces inside his painting. For example, inside the painting “Study for Figure II, 1953/1955, 198 x 137cm and from the detail from the right hand side panel inside “Three studies of the Human Head, 1953, oil on canvas, each panel 61 x 51cm, we can clearly saw his implementation of which it call by Bacon’s exhibition curator, David Sylvester, call it was a “smeared across the features of the face”. Inside the meaning of smearing that David Sylvester mention, it has three definitions – Disintegration, Destruction and Obliteration. I believe that these three definitions were one of the selling points for marketing sick. But they also seem to me that I was also experiencing that these three word which I also want to want to imply inside my work before I saw these information from this catalogue.
Inside his later works of painting, we can also saw the female bodies appeared. In comparison between the male bodies that Bacon painted, the female bodies also look muscular, similar to the male bodies that he painted. Twist body with juxtaposition of leg and arm together with smeared features of faces; build up a super imposition of male image into female bodies, which showed less focusing of soft contour of female bodies. Massive body, using muscle heavily, hard working but with forces from others that was no choices but need to make acceptance by carrying the Trauma alongside with life. These complex experiences that seem to me is suffering through the interface of body to represent ones painful mind. And this is the summarization of my investigation through observation of Francis Bacon’s treatment in his paintings.
Louise Bourgeois, another female artist that I admire for a long time starting from I read about his work through the Internet in a few years ago. For me, the works of Louise Bourgeois cover a lot of media and especially in sculpture and Installation. But, at the same time, her attitude is much more complicated than Francis Bacon towards the area of “Suffering Body”.
Through my investigation, inside an interview by Paulo Herkenhoff with Louise Bourgeois, I start to open the clue of her attitude. Paulo Herkenhoff asked her about the question of fearing and suffering do anything inside her work, she rejects this question strongly. She said that she carried her psychoanalysis about all those things that bother her. It is about her complaints, the component of anger in beauty. I guess this conversation that Louise Bourgeois telling a beautiful lies to the interviewer, Paulo Herkenhoff and me. Inside my overview of her works, my opinion is that I can’t link up a neutral analysis of her about her own mind or other people’s mind, but with anger and explosive intuition towards suffering. She was screaming out the suffering through her works so directly.
She was not doing the Psychoanalysis of herself but offer a pathway for others to do the Psychoanalysis to her. In side her works, even we could not saw real male or female body but through the setting of some her installation works, we can saw a setting, a visual path and logic that she make a clear attitude towards suffering and body. For example, inside her installation works “I do” 1999-2000, Steel, Stainless Steel, Fabric, Glass and wood, 1651 x 600 x 600 cm, “I undo” 1999-2000 Steel, Stainless Steel, wood, glass and epoxy, 1300.5 x 450 x 350.5cm, and “I redo” 1999-2000 Steel, Stainless Steel, Marble, Fabric, Glass and wood, 1750 x 889.5 x 600cm which can show a clearly explanation towards her lies. All these three individual installation was places inside Turbine Hall, Tate Modern of London in 2000 , which combined into a site-specific physical settings, this is a huge complete piece to me. All these three installation works, which have a long circular staircase that can, allow three separate people to climb up to the top or one person to go up one by one. At the top, there is a chair also can allow a people to sit there. Let’s think about this scenario. Long staircase need body energy to climb up to a height of at least 1651cm high and there is only one chair to allow one person to sit there who are separate him or her away from others, like a sky high prison. In my opinion, this is exactly seating to suffering my body and even my soul. In addition, Louise Bourgeois gave them names with a meaning of her will to do this, not to make the installation only, but also offered a meaning of a logic linkage with her willingness to invite the audience to interpret suffering to her own body and other people’s body through the physical experiencing of this set up. These experiences may in order to create a Trauma in our life after experiencing this installation’s setting.
In addition, there are also many other works that involved gender identities as the platform of representation for the topic of “Suffering Body”. She implied body parts like male and female sex organ – pennies, vagina and breast. Her treatment of jamming body parts or using a signal part as subject matters for her sculpture works. She transforming sexual organs into her sculpture by “embodies the notion of the activity of sculpture as a sublimation of the painful and fulfilling acts of lovemaking and giving birth” as mention by Adrian Piper, an art critic professional .
In my conclusion to Louise Bourgeois treatment and hidden attention, I also strongly believe that this problematic was particularly significant for Louise Bourgeois that dealing with or dealt with, but, I also cannot say that she was not true to her work and experience. Her handling of her work is very great to me and offers a great opportunity for me to learn from this great master about the treatment towards the theme of “Suffering Body” through the above analysis journey inside this writing. But her attitude is a bit defensive, not like Francis Bacon ‘s openness to acknowledge his practices are towards suffering body issue comparatively.
Bibliography:
1) M.Scott Peck, The Road less Travelled, Arrow, 1990
2) David Sylvester, Francis Bacon The Human Body, Hayward Gallery and the University of California Press, 1998
3) Wieland Schmied, Francis Bacon Commitment and Conflict, Prestel Plublishing Ltd., 2006
4) Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of PHYCHOANALYSIS, Penguin Books LTD., 1995
5) Robert Storr /Paulo Herkenhoff/ Allan Schwartzman, Louise Bourgeois, Phaidon Press Limited, 2004
6) Robert T. Buck, Charlotta Kotik, Terrie Sultan, Christian Leigh, Louise Bourgeois, The Locus of Memory, Works 1982-1993 Catalogue, Harry N. Abrams, Inc and The Brooklyn Museum, 1994
7) Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 26 November 2003 to 22 February 2004, http//www.nyartsmagazine.com/louisebourgeois.html (access 13 Nov, 07)
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