I recently visited the Francis Bacon retrospective now showing at the Met, & will be heading back for a second go in a few days. I am by no means an expert on visual art, & am far from qualified to comment with intellectual sophistication on the subject. I can, however, talk without embarrassment about how I feel in front of a beautiful painting. Good art, in my opinion, is art that does something. Just as my poetic tastes draw me toward pieces that are somehow in motion through time, work that refuses to stagnate in its specific context, my eye is consistently drawn to the painters who bring the canvas to life, often with violence. A good friend once had a poetry teacher who placed a rock in the middle of the table during workshops. He challenged his students to "move the rock" with their poems. Some poems made the rock move, & they were the good ones. I like paintings that move the rock. & I love paintings that throw the rock through a plate-glass window, grazing your face, maybe knocking out a tooth or two.
That's why my favorite Bacon painting is the 1962 triptych titled "Three Studies for a Crucifixion," particularly its central panel. I had never before experienced the painting in person, & therefore had no idea how deeply textured the piece was. The mutilated carcass featured in the center panel literally protrudes from the canvas with such violent grotesquerie that many people walking through the gallery avoided it. Wide-eyed tourists crowded around papal portraits & screaming baboons while I camped out in front of this triptych, captivated by the delicacy of Bacon's violence. This is a startlingly meticulous execution of a human emotion that is anything but delicate. Bacon accomplishes with focused detail what Pollock created with dynamic chaos. Standing in front of this painting, I was struck at once by both panic and arousal. Something about the blood spatters above the carcass is ejaculatory, something about the body's position screams of the post-coital slouch & exhalation. & yet there is blood & horrific mutilation, something like afterbirth surrounding the body's legs. & there's the revelation. Seeing this painting brings me to life. It kills me. And it fucks me senseless. Bacon forces you into a corner, draws your eye up, down, sideways & in, always in, to something so beautifully grotesque that you can't help but want to touch it. It's precisely how I imagine the phenomenon of Crucifixion, & yet the experience of the painting is still startling. Bacon tells the truth you always knew but never wanted to admit. There's something highly projective about his work, something that forces the viewer not only to interpret but to create as she perceives the image. Because of his abstraction of form, & because vibrant blankness is juxtaposed with insistent detail in so much of his work, Bacon gives the viewer the power to experience & not just receive. When you can't keep your mind from racing, when you're faced with the onslaught of not one, but several of the most insistent & consuming physical & emotional responses to phenomena, you are undeniably active. & good art, in my opinion, is art that activates its audience. What draws me to Bacon is what draws me to Brecht, to Olson & Creeley, to Joyce, to Godard. Passivity, when it comes to all of those men, is death. Act, engage, participate always in a process, or fail.
Last night, conversation with one of my best friends turned, as it often does, to music. The topic at hand was, of course, Michael Jackson. Specifically, the vocal & performative subtleties of the Bad era.
It's a little known fact that Michael capitalized on his acquisition of the Beatles' catalog for Moonwalker, recording a fantastic cover of "Come Together," which reinterprets the classic by substituting Lennon's Abbey Road-period sexy funk with the almost disturbingly abrasive sexuality of Bad-period Jackson. The original is a track defined by its nuances, & the tightly-wound surface under which Lennon moans and wails with beautiful subtlety. Michael uses the track to introduce a new dimension of his persona. This is the first incarnation of a Michael we'll see in 1992, grabbing his crotch and breaking car windows in the banned, extended version of the "Black or White" video (watch it here). Michael never leaves his natural range except in his ornaments, leaving us with the sexy, raspy tone of a voice that, despite clear evidence of strain, is still fresh enough to rock. That's the key with "Come Together." Michael isn't giving you straight pop or a rhythm & blues hybrid track. In terms of production, this is a pop track, but that voice ain't pop. Put it together with the video & we've got a goldmine:
That guy will fuck you senseless and never call you. Ever. I'd deconstruct it further, but I think the proof is in the pudding.
Now, compare it with "Dirty Diana," Michael's (somewhat creepy) No-Means-Yes number 1 from 1988.
This is the other side of the hypersexualized Michael we receive in the late 80s. There's nothing about this track, or the video, that isn't contradictory. It's that same raspy pop star-cum-rock star voice, the same Mick Jagger meets Robert Plant meets James Brown stage presence, but it feels like Michael's giving it away with some very real hesitation. The look on his face in a lot of those close-ups is saying "please don't touch me," but the two stars of this video are his crotch & ass. & at 4:10, when he rips off his t-shirt, the message is fairly clear. The video is littered with arched backs, guitars as phallic symbols, & gyrations that sort of make me want to cross my legs. And this violent sexuality is weirdly complicated by the content of the song. Rock Star meets Groupie, Groupie wants to fuck, Rock Star's got a lady at home, Rock Star says No (over & over) & finally gives in to the Groupie's advances. What's so interesting about the song, though, is the undertone that tells us Michael is essentially being raped by Diana. One of the layers of the track sounds like Michael weeping & moaning in resistance. This isn't your typical groupie-fucking narrative, and that's why you know it's Michael Jackson.
The key to mid-period Michael Jackson is this Look But Don't Touch message. I'm not going to take that assertion where many critics do, because I'm not concerned with the controversies surrounding Neverland Ranch.
This is an especially fascinating moment in Michael's career, not only because of the contradictory nature of his performances, but because of the increasing femininity of his image. His skin is smooth, his body is lithe like a ballerina's, and his face is beautiful. Like a woman's. And here's the irony: Michael begins looking like a woman after moving as far away from his androgynous falsetto as possible. He was a sex symbol in the early 80s, but the majority of his recordings featured the beautiful gender ambiguity of a high tenor that only Michael could pull off. The moany hiccups of "Billie Jean" are replaced with guttural sounds from the throat in the Bad period. By Dangerous, the two styles will be blended into an even more confusing androgyny, but for now, we're dealing with a clear departure from the iconic image forged in 1983. & somehow, he manages to accomplish his masculinization while feminizing his appearance. Genius.
I had never before experienced the painting in person, & therefore had no idea how deeply textured the piece was. The mutilated carcass featured in the center panel literally protrudes from the canvas with such violent grotesquerie that many people walking through the gallery avoided it. Wide-eyed tourists crowded around papal portraits & screaming baboons while I camped out in front of this triptych, captivated by the delicacy of Bacon's violence. This is a startlingly meticulous execution of a human emotion that is anything but delicate. Bacon accomplishes with focused detail what Pollock created with dynamic chaos. Standing in front of this painting, I was struck at once by both panic and arousal. Something about the blood spatters above the carcass is ejaculatory, something about the body's position screams of the post-coital slouch & exhalation. & yet there is blood & horrific mutilation, something like afterbirth surrounding the body's legs. & there's the revelation. Seeing this painting brings me to life. It kills me. And it fucks me senseless. Bacon forces you into a corner, draws your eye up, down, sideways & in, always in, to something so beautifully grotesque that you can't help but want to touch it. It's precisely how I imagine the phenomenon of Crucifixion, & yet the experience of the painting is still startling. Bacon tells the truth you always knew but never wanted to admit. There's something highly projective about his work, something that forces the viewer not only to interpret but to create as she perceives the image. Because of his abstraction of form, & because vibrant blankness is juxtaposed with insistent detail in so much of his work, Bacon gives the viewer the power to experience & not just receive. When you can't keep your mind from racing, when you're faced with the onslaught of not one, but several of the most insistent & consuming physical & emotional responses to phenomena, you are undeniably active. & good art, in my opinion, is art that activates its audience. What draws me to Bacon is what draws me to Brecht, to Olson & Creeley, to Joyce, to Godard. Passivity, when it comes to all of those men, is death. Act, engage, participate always in a process, or fail.
