Francis Bacon's 'Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X.'

Essay from the year 2002 in the subject Art - Installation / Action/Performance Art / Modern Art, grade: 75/100 (A), University of Edinburgh (College of Humanities and Social Sciences; School of Arts, Culture and Environment), language: English, abstract: Critics usually agree that seeing a painting by Francis Bacon (1909 - 1992) is, to a greater or lesser degree, an aesthetically painful experience. While this might be said of many works of art created in the 20th century, in the case of Bacon, this painfulness can surely be understood in a very specific sense. In the course of this essay, I shall focus on one of Bacon's earlier works, his 1953 painting 'Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X.' I will try to analyze in which way the picture achieves its disturbing effect and in how far this effect lies at the very center of the 'meaning' of Bacon's painting.