A Daughter and Father Examine a State of Panic (after John Ward McClellan)

Where are we? It is a place called an "art gallery". What are we doing? It is time to look at a picture. Why? It is a good thing to do now that you have had another birthday. Which picture is it? It is this one. What is that? It is a wood. What is a wood? It is a collection of bare branches, crackling in the wind. Why are the branches bare? It is possible that it is winter. What is winter? It is the time of year when it is cold. Who are they? It is a group of people picnicking in the wood. What is picnicking? It is eating food in a place unprotected from the wild elements. Why are they eating outside when it's cold? It is because they do not have houses.

Why are the branches so straight? It is the sort of branches that this sort of tree has.

What is the thing with squares? It is the board for a game called "chess". What is chess? It is a game where people try to be more intelligent than the person they are playing against by moving people and animals around.

Who are the man and the woman in the middle? It is the people in charge. Why are they not doing anything? It is because they are in charge, so other people do things. Why? It is the way that things are.

What is that thin thing over there on the tree? It is called a "tendril". It is like a branch, only thinner: there are lots of them, if you look carefully. Why is it there? It is there to prove that the tree is alive even though the branches are bare. What are the things on the tendrils? It is a type of fruit, but it is poisonous.

What is that? It is a sheet that they have placed on the ground, to eat their food from. Why do they have such big sheets? It is because they use those sheets to make the things that they sleep in when they stop for the night.

What is that? It is an animal called a deer. Why is it hiding? It is because they might catch it, kill it and eat it.

What is that face on the ground? It is a thing called a "mask". What is the mask for? It is made from the face of the man she loves, who has had to go away to war. What is war? It is a thing where old men tell young men to kill other young men.

What are those things over there in the back? It is a pair of horses. What is a horse? It is a type of animal. Why do they have the horses? It is a tradition of people who keep travelling. What are they for? It is their function to carry people and to carry the food for the picnic.

Why have the branches gone so twisted? It is an attempt to block out all the light possible, because something is happening. What? It is something that we have caused.

What has made the people and the animals go away from the chessboard? It is the wind that has blown them away.

Where has the deer gone? It has been blown by the wind against a tree and sucked underneath the bark of the tree.

What is wrong with the horses? It is fear and anxiety to leave.

What are the people doing? It is an attempt to escape. What are they trying to escape from? It is a change in the natural order so that the branches are quiet and the wind is cracking. What are they carrying? It is the food that they have wrapped up because they cannot afford to waste it. What is that coming through the trees? It is the sheet. What is the sheet doing? It is coming from elsewhere. It is rustling in along the forest floor and bending in around the trunks. It is attempting to get bigger. Why is it like that? It has turned into a sea and it is trying to drown them before they can escape from the wood.

Where are the people now? It is the same place, but it is different. How is it different? It is not a wood. It is no longer a collection of trees. What is it? It is someone's scalp. What is a scalp? It is the skin of somebody's head. What is on the scalp? It is a collection of hairs that look like crooked branches. What is the sheet doing? It is actually a towel that is being scraped across the head.

Why are the people in charge in front of everybody else? It is because are they not carrying anything. Why are they not carrying anything? It is because they are in charge, so other people carry things. Why? It is the way that things are.

What is the woman doing, stretching out to the mask? It is to an attempt to pick up the mask and save it. Why is she trying to save it? It is an attempt to save the man she loves as well.

Why does that man have his head in his hands? It is an attempt to protect himself from the scraping sound that is filling his ears.

What are those people putting into the bags? It is all the sheets that make their homes.

What will happen now? It is too late for everybody: the towel will sweep them away. Where are we? It is a place called "the heaven". What are we doing? It is the fact that we are looking at it that has caused it to change. How is it changing? It is changing towards the worst. What is that called? It is a word called "annihilation". What does that mean? It is all over. It is the end.

A Guardian Angel Explains Blood on Pavement (after Francis Bacon)

This is a chav town: long life is a luxury here. Never forget that.

But now, things are calm. The wind is too lazy to get up yet.

Look down there at the footpath: there it is – can you see it? That single painted paving stone is what will give you the clues to allow you to know everything you need to know about this place. Look at it: you can see it hemmed in by the port-town greyness of the blank ones around it. Look at the edge-curls of its ageing paint waving in the rain. Listen carefully, and you can hear them scratching wetly against each other, mingling like blood in a violent friendship.

It just appeared. Nobody saw it happen. Somebody must have chosen to paint it, throughout one night, but nobody knows why.

It must have been created on the night of the blood-moon: look at the way that whoever it was smeared a horizon across the middle of the painting, then hurled a blood-moon onto the horizon, and made the blood-moon instantly tatter into roughness, unravelling beneath the black-painted sky.

But if you look carefully at all those mashed-together pigments, they all seem to be rotting away - they seem deciduous. Red flakes to purple, and purple to brown.

It's not all paint anymore, either. Time has added its own substances to it.

Look there. There are incidents scratched into it, if you look closely. Depictions of short-fuse stand-offs. Short-term cowardice. More minglings of fluids. There are outlines of fists in the wash, invisible unless you look closely. There is evidence of at least two events there. And at least six people. There were none to start with, when it was first painted, but it's stained with the real stuff now. Stained with the things that appear in the curl of the night.

Go on - check it out! Feel it. You can sense the demarcation of feuding fields of energy; you can see the archaeology of conflict smeared horizontal: you can see the strata of booze-fouled ego clashes and nocturnal petty tribal bellowing fights.

Somebody must have chosen to paint it, and what they painted is all pain.

Lie down there and make sure you avoid the dog turds and the glass from the bottles – go on, do it – there's nothing of you, and there's more than enough space! Now you can hear it speak, hear it whisper of the raised voices. Now you can hear time imposing its date of destruction.

I am fading away now, and my guiding hand will soon be withdrawn, and you will soon be on your own. Time for you to stand up and be recognised.

I can feel the wind finally getting itself up. Soon it will be hurling itself up from the port and soon its rickety tongue will be in everything, and then red will flake to purple, and purple to brown, and brown will flake away into its soot-soaked clutches. Wind. Time. Erodes us all in the end.

I am fading away now, and eventually the remains of this painting will also dust itself away into nothing but flecks of pollution in the already pollution-saturated air, but the disagreements that caused its creation will not, and they will still hum across the paving stones, and that is what you will need to watch over, but not interfere with, because this is the jurisdiction that you have accepted, and please never forget: this is a chav town, and long life is a luxury here.

Devoid

THIS WORK WAS CREATED BY FRANCIS BACON IN LONDON IN 1953 AND IS BASED UPON THE HIGH BAROQUE PAINTING OF POPE INNOCENT X PAINTED BY DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ IN ROME IN 1650 AND INCORPORATES THE UNFORGETTABLE IMAGE OF THE NANNY ATTACKED BY GOVERNMENT TROOPS ON THE HARBOUR STEPS IN 1905 DEPICTED IN THE SILENT FILM OF THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN DIRECTED BY SERGEI EISENSTEIN IN ODESSA IN 1925

And stop.
The murmur of voices around the circle is stilled.
Let the COUNTDOWN BEGIN.

Start the clock and
Paint!
And the big hand of time dips in the goo and stirs
mixing the influences
stirring the elements
cobbling together an assemblage
quilting the elements with controlled but shaking hands
collision-editing the fragments into fragments
as Bacon bends to his meat-hook muse's calling
and dips in the yielding palette knife
and tries to plough an honest furrow
tries to ply an honest trade
while the blasé art world holds its hushing breath
prepares to shrug designer-suited shoulders
prepares to reach for a monogrammed leather chequebook.

But perching high above this random chanting rabble
like Long John Silver's faithful backtop monkey
lounges Grumpy Gus
the art-critic, the film-critic,
the grand purveyor of all things farty-critical.
He blows his big cheeks out with due reflection
pontificates about the mess below.

And what does Grumpy Gus say about Velázquez?
"He was an old fop fart, a self-important little father's boy who painted queer little cherub mouths on queer little cherub angels."

[Is that a fact?
I think that Gus perhaps is pestered
by the painful possibility
of potential fluctuations
of his self-proclaimed and painfully secure
sexuality]

But no matter
Please ignore me
Please continue
"Velázquez?
He scuttled from his master
He fled from the dark
He fled the light
He fled from the violent
queer
third-degree chiaroscuro of Caravaggio."

But Caravaggio breathed beneath his skin still lurking still waiting to fester out and Bacon BACON was his squint-eyed dead-eyed Caravaggio:
the man who outed him
flouted the conventions
routed his preconceptions
and brought the childhood crib-dreams flashing back.

Do you remember your nanny, Diego?
Where is your nanny now?
Can you see her creeping down the stairs
like a floating ghostly empty granny-nightshirt?
Do you see her, Diego?
A big waddling heron on stilt-white legs
walking down the steps to oblivion
about to be caught in the grey-grained silent nightmare
about to fall screaming, eyes akimbo, the blood sucked up and out,
caught in Sergei's propaganda hell.

So what does Grumpy Gus say about Eisenstein?
"Nice words, shame about the pictures.
Eisenstein was an egotist
a Flash Harry
a man too full of himself to be sure of himself
a Goebbels for his Soviet Tsarist masters."

I think that Gus is getting quite reactionary in his dotage.
I think that Gus is scared of what his very make-up hides
and that is
Meat.
That's all.
Meat.
His blood-fed dark constituency.
Meat.
What little girls and boys are made of.
Captured meat on swaying meat-hooks.
We are animal so we are meat.
And that's what triggered-of these blood-soaked steps.
Potemkin happened - why?
The Kronstadt navy wouldn't eat
their putrefying meat
that sheltered maggots
and revolted.
Rebelled and turned against their blue-blood masters.
Turned them to blackened pudding in a day.
And then the poor old nurse was turned to sausagemeat in transit.
And what would they have done for well-grilled Bacon?
(But Bacon slid from them and slipped the net.)

But Innocent the Tenth
had other meat to fry
sat eyeing unmarked souls
with a butcher's practised eye
in his Hannibal Lecter plate-glass liftshaft eyrie
and knew his brand would soon be on each rasher of their being.
This Pope,
this Tsar of mental putrefaction
living his wordless bloodless cannibal life
on a gilded throne?
In a gilded cage?
Or perhaps an electric chair?
Yes, perhaps he has his own bright death row limbo.

For Caravaggio
the lout who painted saints with dirty feet
the man who painted maggots in the apple
pursues him yet
pursues him still
comes knocking on the glass
the glass ground out of a million sacrificed nannies

And what does Grumpy Gus say about Caravaggio?
[Gus is silent about the Pope's boy's eminence grise.
Gus must hold his counsel
for he knows the brawling dago is his own bete noir as well.
He knows the score.
He knows that
Caravaggio will not be left behind.
Caravaggio will shine his dirty light into his presence from the past
will one day come to kiss him in his dreams.
Will come to torture-up poor Gus's
bourgeois
papal
soul.

So there we have it.
There we have it in an oilpot.
So hold your breath, my children
hold your breath
for until that blessed moment
until that cursed release
the storm will hide beneath the lull.
Be still
and listen
to a scrape of continental plates
a dullard murmuring of surfaces.
They move together now - the stricken nurse, the fated prelate, the screeching lines of pain.
This is the unholy triptych.
This is the wasteland of mix and match
and Bacon pounces
sees his chance and
melds the bastard hybrid into place
and when at last the crucial wad of paint folds over
the Pope screams
the Pope screams
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
screams like Norman Bates's backing music

and Bacon
the Norman Bates of the oil palette
secure in his psychopath petticoat disguise

stabs in the paint
stabs in the paint
stabs in the paint
stabs in the paint
with his heavy-handled brush
grinds in the robes (those Papal petticoats)
(remnants of silk in the pigment)
crushes the spectacles (those blind reproaches)
(shards of glass in the linseed)
then lays his bristles down
and just like Captain Hook
he reaches for the bending metal phoney hand again

and it is
FLAYED ON FLAYED ON.
The knife goes in
the paint goes down.
Smeared on.
Smeared on.
A mish-mash trowelled together.

And NOW it exists:
Now it has its being.
He takes a backwards step and knows his mark is made
knows his dark creation has escaped
and knows that this work IS
this work IS
this work was
this work was

BASED UPON THE HIGH BAROQUE FILM OF GOVERNMENT TROOPS Again the guttural plainchant CREATED BY THE NANNY IN ODESSA IN 1905 winds its whispered bell-change path around the room. DEPICTED IN THE UNFORGETTABLE FILM OF POPE INNOCENT X He waves the oil-smeared knife like Toscanini ATTACKED BY THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN IN LONDON IN 1650 and he shouts Louder! AND INCORPORATES THE HIGH BAROQUE PAINTING OF DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ LOUDER still and LOUDER! CREATED BY THE NANNY IN ROME IN 1925 The mutilated souls ring in his ears AND IS BASED UPON THE HIGH BAROQUE FILM OF FRANCIS BACON he picks the brush back up DIRECTED BY SERGEI EISENSTEIN IN ODESSA IN 1905 and Innocent and nanny wrestle in the viscous debris. DEPICTED IN THE SILENT FILM OF THE NANNY (The brush hairs are a blur - CREATED BY POPE INNOCENT X IN ROME IN 1925 FASTER still and FASTER!) AND IS BASED UPON THE SILENT PAINTING OF DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ And Norman Bates and Caravaggio limp out arm-in-arm together PAINTED BY FRANCIS BACON IN LONDON IN 1953 and Grumpy Gus faints clean away AND IS BASED UPON THE SILENT PAINTING OF THE NANNY before he has a chance to conquer PAINTED BY FRANCIS BACON IN ROME IN 1905 the nanny of his own constraints AND INCORPORATES THE SILENT IMAGE OF FRANCIS BACON smashed into nothingness ATTACKED BY FRANCIS BACON IN ROME IN 1905 and his guilt-sins rolling down the steps DEPICTED IN THE UNFORGETTABLE PAINTING OF SERGEI EISENSTEIN down down to the drowning DIRECTED BY THE NANNY IN ODESSA IN 1953 and the scream evaporates and clings to Bacon's skin. DEPICTED IN THE FILM OF GOVERNMENT TROOPS He screams again inside DIRECTED BY SERGEI EISENSTEIN IN ROME IN 1905 Is there no end to this mutilation? AND INCORPORATES THE UNFORGETTABLE FILM OF DIEGO VELÁZQUÉZ The final tick inside his brain cries out no more ATTACKED BY POPE INNOCENT X IN ODESSA IN 1925 and STOP! he cries DEPICTED IN THE HIGH BAROQUE BATTLESHIP GOVERNMENT TROOPS STOP STOP! DIRECTED BY FRANCIS BACON IN ODESSA IN 1925 Will no-one bring me peace? BASED UPON THE FILM OF POPE INNOCENT X Will no-one rid me of this blood and slaughter? ATTACKED BY POPE INNOCENT X IN ODESSA IN 1650…
He gazes down at the minestrone maelstrom.
(The sunken vessel bubbles from the paint.)
A papal mitre bubbles on the ooze.
A broken double-helix bend of wire betrays myopia destroyed.
There will be no more weakness in this Brave New World.

The screaming freezes over.
The final brushwork is applied.
The final sidelong squint
and the deconstructed artist
acknowledges his ultimate betrayal.
Completion is defeat.
His monster has now breathed the air of day.
He gives a final nod
and limps his self-inflicted image
out
out
out the studio door
click it goes
click click.
The film of his own life is silent now.