in Soho, Francis Bacon, 1967.
Bacon, Beckett, Kafka and…Deleuze!
White had read Deleuze’s book on Francis Bacon, and
while he loved Deleuze’s commentaries on grandiose figures such as Nietzsche,
Beckett and his fellow Dubliner, White was less keen on Deleuze’s own writing.
The fact that both Beckett and Bacon came from very similar social backgrounds,
Anglo-Irish protestant stock, and that they were both born at pretty much the
same time, Beckett was born in 1906 and Bacon was born three years later, was but another extraordinary coincidence in a series of many; both men died in their 83rd
year, the former in 1989 and the latter in 1992. Both also lived in Dublin, but more than that they were also geographically
very proximate as Bacon’s family had a town house, number 63 Baggott Street
Lower, while Beckett’s father had an office, 6 Clare Street, where he worked as
a quantity surveyor. The two buildings are not so distant from one another with
only Merrion Square really separating them from one another; the walking
distance between the two being not much more than five to ten minutes,
depending on your pace.
White, whose own family, on his father’s side, grew
up, again, within a 15 to 20 minute walking distance from the two in
Sandymount, was not only familiar with the two artists from a very early age,
he discovered Bacon while he was a very young man of 15 while standing within
walking distance from the painter’s house in a bookshop where he discovered a
large book with plenty of colour illustrations of the artist’s work. White
hadn’t known it, at the time, the fact that Bacon was born only across the street
where he had discovered the art book, there was a beautiful old book shop just
after then old bridge that joined Lower Baggot Street with Upper. Again, it was
just one of those ‘coincidences’ that life seemed to be so full of and to which
the North American writer Paul Auster paid so much attention to.
What attracted White immediately to the paintings of
Francis Bacon was the subject matter; Bacon was one of the few modern painters
who was primarily interested in the human figure, and Bacon painted it in such
a way that White, even as a young man of 15, so in the throes of adolescence,
could instinctively relate to. It was the way in which the artist painted the
flesh, and this is what Deleuze was so good at describing.
For example, in the fourth chapter of his book Francis
Bacon, Deleuze references another one of White’s childhood influences, and
in relation to the human spine, which he compares to a sword. White had never
come across this description by Kafka before and he found the description
deeply insightful. Ever since he had started the ballet classes, ever since he
had begun the very intense movements involved in the grand écarté and
which caused such a profound effort of will, both physical and mental, on his
part, White, as soon as he had read the chapter by Deleuze, had begun to
imagine his own spine as this great blade and whose tip had been embedded in
the very middle of his pelvic girdle, the place where the vertebrae and the
pelvic bone meet, as all around here, at the very base of his vertebrae, the
blood arose slowly like a precious liquid warmed by the sun, the ‘sun’ being
the heat which White generated from the pressure and force of his extreme
exertions.
White had often lamented the fact that the painter had
never treated the subject of a dancer, such as Rudolph Nureyev ( 1938-1993),
the Russian exile who had made such a superlative name for himself, and who had
perhaps singlehandedly, rather like Bacon himself, brought the discipline and
art of ballet to so many people who would perhaps never have taken an interest
in the art, like White for example, if it were not for the dancer’s own
singular vision and which caused such a monumental sensation on audiences and
people everywhere.
White’s own interest in ballet was of course ignited
by Nureyev, and in particular the ballet that Nijinsky created after the poem
by Mallarmé and the music by Debussy L’Après-midi d’un faune or The
Faun’s Afternoon and whose subject matter was so dear to White himself, and
perhaps most teenage boys – namely masturbation! The theme was one which Bacon
himself had so bravely treated, alongside other such domestic scenes such as
shitting and taking drugs, shooting up! These were, after all, the everyday
activities of so many people, the deplorables, no doubt, but of which White was
one.
White always remembered seeing the astonishing
portraits of Bacon himself, or George Dyer, simulating masturbation on a chair
in the middle of an unkempt room, a subject worthy of Joyce as well, so
inherently modernist in outlook. Egon Schiele was another near contemporary (
1890 -1918) and who was also treating such subject matter, back then!
The blood was spirit raised by the physical exercises
that White had invested in both his time and his energy, his focus, and
dedication. Spirit, yes! It was, after all, such spirit invested in the thing!
In fact, it had everything to do with the investment, the spirit and also the
breath. Yogic breath. Anima the soul in breath! Aristotelian notions,
but guided also by Plato…
But to return to Kafka’s notion of the spine as
sword…this notion sat so perfectly as a descriptor with White, in relation to
his own body-spirit, and the paintings of Francis Bacon. For, once White had
activated the muscles and the blood, warming up as he did before he went to
work every morning, that blessed hour before the dawn, when White eventually,
after almost an hour of stretching exercises, managed to eventually extend his
whole body to reach its maximum extension, le grand écarté, this is when
Kafka’s notion of the spine as sword really resonated for White, for all around
the solid structure of the vertebra, set as they were in the girdle of the
pelvic seat, he suddenly became aware of the fluid inside his body rising up in
him, it was of course the blood, and the blood circulated in a warm current
around the base of his spine, the hilt of the sword, and the warmth of the
blood was akin to spirit.
Indeed, the spirit was so good in him that White, at
this stage in his exercises often broke out laughing to himself, or indeed
smiled to the camera that he had open on his laptop and which he used as a
mirror, as he had no full length mirror in his apartment so the camera, which
he alternately switched from still image to film mode, depending on his whim.
But, his spine felt so heavy and the weight of it also carried with it a great
danger, it seemed to move inside him like a great blade. White could only conclude
from Kafka’s analogy that Kafka must have been an athlete or at least he must
have done physical exercises himself in order to have been able to construe
such a very fine and apt analogy, for it was so very true.
So true was it that it got White to think about the
other names that we had for the bone structures in the skeletal body, such as
shoulder blades and rib cage. Both of these were so in keeping with Kafka’s
analogy. The weight of the bones was embodied in the terminology, a cage of
ribs. The body, flesh and blood that is, so imprisoned within the skin and
which was in turn hung like a tent on the supporting structure of the
foundational elements grounded to the earth. This is where Bacon came in, as
Deleuze was at pains to point out. Perhaps, the first painter in history to
truly attempt to liberate the flesh and blood in spirit out through the
edifices of the body. The mouth and the anus, the nostrils and the penis. Out
of all of these orifices the spirit breath or anima flowed outward, in other
words escaped the confines of the bones and experienced weightlessness. After
all, this is what we mean by spirit breath – anima, being another word for
soul.
The body housed the ensouled matter under the skin
within the confines of the cage of the ribs, and the blades of the shoulders.
Bacon’s colours, his paint, never so voluptuous as when he was painting the
flesh, the flesh in movement and decomposition. The body then Heraclitean
containing all four elements, bones analogous with the earth, blood water,
breath air and spirit fire which was warming in the blood at the very hilt of
the sword.
Why hadn’t he painted Nureyev? The opulence of the
flesh in full movement, the anima of breath. The clothing or fetishes clinging
to the body, and in particular the tights which envelope the flesh in a smooth
contour, or pool of blood, almost shadow like. The blood warm then like wine…un
Pauillac.. Chateau Rothchild… un Grand Cru…!
The bones then cutting into the poor rounds of
luxuriant flesh, the face grimaces with the excruciating pain. The body is
suffering. Suffering every day. The wounds assault with the days. Be they
temperature, rising or falling in the extreme. The body flung out in maximum
extension. The trial by fire. Maintaining, enduring the extremity of the force.
The blunt trauma.
White was always astonished at this early stage in his
development at the sheer force that crushed him every time when his two limbs
were stretched out on either side of him, it would typically take him three
attempts acclimatising each limb, before he could even attempt the final effort
at attaining maximum extension, and these efforts would take around an hour.
Sometimes, after each effort, he would always gather in his legs like two great
hands, again very aware of the sharp blades of the elbows and shoulders, as
contrasted with the soft warm flesh of the muscle that hung like a fruit from
the limb. The skin, so soft, the flesh so tender and in such sharp contrast to
the sever cuts of the bone.
The pain in the joints than would begin to appear as
soon as he made the opposite inward motion or force with his limbs, all in an
effort to limber up the muscles in an attempt to render them more flexible so
that he would be able to try again the maximum extension, but not before he
stood as much as he could on the balls of his feet which just protruded from
out of the soft woollen legwarmers which kept his calves warm.
Then, being in the vertical position, but squatting
still putting a tremendous force on the balls of his feet, the thighs and calf
muscles pumping the blood for all they were worth, but always the bullion of
warm, like gold, trickling in tributaries down the small incline of his
back…the taut waistband of the string, under the tights, snugly securing his
sex in its silken warm grip between his thighs, and the string of the waistband
so light, emphasising the light weight of his hips.
Standing upward the head high, all blood rushing, his
two palms pressed downward on the angular anvil angle of the pelvic bone, the
tender warmth emanating from the golden torc of his palms, the soft glow of the
gently warming blood trickling still trickling down in gentle rich cascades,
warming him greatly, bringing the smile, his animate breath outward from the
tongue.
And then, once more horizonal, both legs stretched out
on either side of him. His groin soft pressed with the bulge of the tights
showing prominent, legs in a quick scissors movement, the blades again pointing
outward, always this constant dichotomy of opposition; hard solids of the bones
versus the soft pliant lubricant of the blood and the flesh…
Sometimes the gelatinous buttock quivers, like jelly
the rump of the buttock, spasm twitching brought about by the impossible strain
of the external pressure placed on the outward extension of the twin blades,
the knees inward causing a rise which needs to be erased, smoothed down until
the bones align with the hardwood floor. Bone on wood. Wood bone.
Upon it, the soft pliancy of the rivulets of flesh and
the skin, so tender in the soft fragile air-light fabric of the tights…this
breath breaking down in anima… all said, the iconic image of de Vowels stares back out at him, she whom he
had given himself to also at maximum extension.
The striving of the bone to break and rip through the
muscle chord, the ligaments at full torc of the maximum, this being reflected
in the witness of her eyes, the blades of her smile, ripping like the sword
through his spine, erupting in the unsettled blood that warms with the rise,
the taut limbs and string…his breath animate…the tight compression of the
fabric a second skin enveloping him paralleling the string ligament, his twin
blades in 180 degrees vying for maximum extension…
He in an extremely vulnerable dimension, the fruit
muscles to be plucked from like grapes, the soft warmth of the tenderness, the
press of flesh, the rude rump of his buttocks, their pound of flesh, all
skyward with Shylock and all the while the great lance of his twin limbs in
purely horizontal motion, torso snug now almost in its saddle, the girdle, the
sword hilt embedded wholly in the wall of bone, its basin or girdle worn like a
crown around the hilt of him.
She now iconic smiling at him in pure extension, the
release drive the motor in extension of him and the air, anima in breath
further, the torso levitating skyward and mobile, a pendulum ticking slowly and
delicately on either side of him, the tights envelope a sausage, his swoon ward
motion seemingly vertical, all angles and blades cutting into him, but the
blood secretes in rivulets of skin; the tender loin is now a part of him.
