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Man's most basic expression, the scream, is presented in novel form in the work of Francis Bacon and the artist duo Gilbert & George. The basis of their works is private experience as well as more general issues such as sexual identity and existential angst. A common feature of their versions of the motif is that they are not direct reworkings of Munch's painting The Scream. The mouth agape in a scream in many of Bacon's paintings is based on a scene from Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin (1925). For Bacon, the scene where a nurse is screaming after being shot in the eye is a picture of the human being's ultimate loss of control. As in Munch's work, the scream in Bacon's Portrait Study (1952) is echoed in the surroundings, but the despair and desperation in Munch is replaced by a much more animal brutality in Bacon. The human being is not swallowed up by the surroundings and absorbed into them, as in Munch's case, but reduced to vulnerable flesh. Gilbert & George have an ambivalent attitude to the scream as a human expression. By including themselves in the works, they present the painting as a pun on attitudes rather than as an expression of personal experiences. The huge face in the background of Cry forms his mouth into a silent O, without angst or aggression, indeed without any expression at all, his action mimicked by the small figure. The presence of the artists also makes the pictures into self-portraits. The observer gains access to a private universe, yet at the same time the portrait essentially deals with the subject's own view of himself. It is about recognition. And it is perhaps here that the observer can see a reflection of himself. |
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