Orestes1.0263

Orestes1.0263_Bacon

ogcma@byu

ClCv241

Mastery

MythMatters

Francis Bacon

Triptych inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus

1981 Oil on canvas
each panel 78 x 58 inches
Private collection

"In a masterpiece of the eighties Bacon dealt with the dark events of the Oresteia myth. 'Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus, 1984' is one of his most condensed and austere inventions, representing the Baconian equivalent of the tragic agon in three panels of powerfully condensed, hypnotic imagery. At left, the haunting and obscene symbol of the Erinyes, the Furies that relentlessly pursued a hallucinating Orestes for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra, dangles like an obscene bat-like creature in a cage structure.

"Although the action isn't speciafically bound to a particular scene in the Aeschylus trilogy, the central panel suggest the contorted figure of the fouly murdered Agamemnon, focusing on his spinal structure and jaw in the frontal plane, as if seen in x-ray vision. The ceremonial dais and a schematic throne can be read as the high position of the king who met his death at the hands of the gueen mother, out of vengeance for his own sacrificial murder of their daughter Iphigenia. The third panel evokes both victim and oppressor and may stand for the tragic hero Orestes as well as the undefined shapes and darkness of unformed life (the elan vital or libido), lifting the chilling painting to an even higher level of allegorical meaning. This inspired paraphrase of the action and possible modern applications of Greek tragedy translates into the recognizable Surrealist forms of metamorphosis and interiorized imagery."

Sam Hunter