Triptych: 3 Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer (1964)

From Francis Bacon: Logic of Sensation: "The extraordinary agitation of these heads is not derived from a movement that the series would supposedly reconstitute, but rather from the forces of pressure, dilation, contraction, flattening, & elongation that are exerted on the immobile head. They are like the forces of the cosmos confronting an inter-galactic traveler immobile in his capsule. It is as if invisible forces were striking the head from many different angles. The wiped & swept parts of the face here take on new meaning, because they mark the zone where the force is in the process of striking. This is why the problems Bacon faces are indeed those of deformation & not transformation. These are two very different categories. The transformation of form can be abstract or dynamic. But deformation is always bodily, & it is static, it happens at one place; it subordinates movement to force, but it also subordinates the abstract to the Figure" (Deleuze 50). Click images for bigness.