1 G ilíes Deleuze - Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation 2 vols. Paris: Edition de la diffie'rence (1981).
2. David S alle - in "David Salle, An Interview with David Salle" by Peter Schjeldahl, N e w York: V in ta g e C onte m po rary A rtists, Elizabeth Avedon - Editions (1987).
3. David S a lle - ibid (1987).
W ith in th e context o f the history o f painting, the fem ale nude has featured as an object surveyed/displa yed fo r the privileged m ale gaze o f spectator/owner. (As a category of representation this category hasemblamatized conventional projections of male desire). W omen are not presented as essentially them selves but rather as objectifications of a presum ed male subjectivity. This obje ctification was prim arily justified by the elevation o f the nud e to the "h ig h -a rt" status o f the classica l academ ic tradition. Traditionally one o f the exem plarly exam ples o f artistic expression, the nude was integrated into mythological/biblical/historical them es that generated drverse/dramatic effects. The genre functioned to reconcile the conflict between propriety and sexual pleasure. However, by the mid-nineteenth century the genre began to d isin te g ra te . In term s o f artistic convention, it was no longer incontrovertible th a t the presentation of the nude should appear within a thematic context. The resultant consequence was realized by the progressive development o f the nude depicted prominently in unidealized modes o f depiction. Given its principle status within the classical canon it was therefore inevitable that the nude would com e to adopt a central role within the iconoclastic force of modernism - the nude th a t transgressed/inverted the erotic ideal, (e.g. Edouard Manet "Olympia" (1863)/Pablo P icasso "Daem oiselles d A vig n o n " (1907)/W illem de Kooning 'W om en 1" (1950/52)). Manet's "Olympia", frequently acknowledged as the first modem masterpiece, is a radical departure from pre vio u s app roaches to the nude, and at the tim e was highly controversial.
No lo n g e r a subm issive and seductive ephemeral offering, "Olympia" is self-co nfid ent and co n fro n ta tio n a l - fixing her eyes on the view er in a m atter-of-fact defiant directness. She appears to know, as a prostitute, her position as a perfect/complete commodity. (See: W alter Benjam in "Paris: Capital o f the Nineteenth Century Reflections", trans Edmund Jephcott, New York: H a rcou rt Brace Jovanovich (1978)).
"O lym pia's" declaration o f independence and self-awareness is a m etaphorical correlative of modernism's formal position - its imperative tone and self-prodaimed autonomy Modem painting asserted its autonom y/its "objectness" by emphasizing the process o f picture-m aking itself - its ow n internal "lang uages" o f colour/line/shape/surface. (This will be treated m ore extensively in proceeding sections). David Salle takes this modernist self-reflexivity a stage further. The process of representation is understood to include not only the disposition of lin e s/co lo u rs/ shap es on a flat plane, but additionally the cultural/sociological force s that s tru c tu re the interactions betw een the artist/the viewer/the work. In contrast to the declarative mode of the modernist painting - "Look at me!"/"l am a real object" - Salle's address is interrogative - "Are you looking at m e T T W h yT W h a t am I?" The ubiquitous female nude model co n stitu te s the principle articulating agent o f Salle address.
Salle is not the only artist to bring into question the function of sexuality in contem porary art and culture. Kitaj/Dine/Rosenquist/Fischl/Clemente/Freud among others have also engaged with such issues, recognizing th e m as a m otivating force in the re-assertion of "figurative painting". Using sim ilar means, Rosenquist confronted analogous themes with 'Playgirf' (1966), yet Salle goes beyond Rosenquisfs unequivocal equation of the woman's body with consumer and disposable production, his cross-referencing of high-art and "pornography", the im agery of taste a n d desire, addresses m ore subtly the fabrication/reception o f w o rks of art. These pictures concern fem ale sexuality as well as male. Salle's im ages do not share the explicit voyeurism of, for exam ple, Francesco Clemente's "Four W inds" (1981). They often im ply the com plicity o f the w om an, fo r exam ple 'T h e School Room" (1985), has been linked to the confrontational/hard-edged fem ale eroticism found in the works of Kathy Acker, with whom Salle has worked. (February 198 4-S a lle designs sets for the Richard Forman directed/Kathy Acker written play "Birth o f a Poet"). (In 1979 Salle read Juliet Mitchell's 'T h e Sadian W o m a n ", a feminist interpretation o f de Sade. Subsequently he adapted phrases from this as titles for pain ting s, such as "R o b Him o f Pleasure").
The force o f Salle's nude-m odels does not lie in angst-ridden narratives neither is it generated p rin cip a lly by direct refe ren ces to past art o r to pornographic type m aterial. His posed figures, tensed or twisted/offering or constrained are derived from photographs staged by Salle him self; th e y m ay have a g e n e ric relationship to the historical nude o r to the nude o f the pornographic magazine but they are distanced/removed - yet not rendered entirely neutral - by m ediated decisions/the e vide nce of artistic selection/arrangem ents
4. Gilles Deleuze - "F ou cault" Paris: M inuit (1986).
5. Gilles Deleuze - "D ia lo g u e s" with C laire Parnet Paris: Flam m anon (1977).
6 Gilles Deleuze - o p .c it (1981)
7. In "Logique de la sensation" an art historical argum ent emerges, but here, in contrast to the works on cinema, th e history never appears to be even partially totalized. It develops only in fragments and contrived digressions that slowly reveals glim pses of a narrative that is never entirely com pleted/articulated.
8 Henri M aldiney "R e g a rd Parole Espace" Lausanne: Editions I'Age d'H om m e (1973).
9 Jean-François Lyo ta rd "Discours Figure" Paris: Klincksieck (1971).
10 Erwin Straus 'T he Prim ary World of the Senses" (A Vindication of Sensory Experience) (trans Jacob Needlem an (1963). N e w York Free Press.
11 Gilles Deleuze - o p .c it (1981 )
12. G illes Deleuze - ibid (1981).
13. Gilles Deleuze - ibid (1981).
14 Peter Schjedahl - "C o nversatio n with David Salle" Arts Journal 30 Sept.Oct. (1981).
15 Peter Schjedahl - ib id . (1981).
16. David Salle - op.cit (1987)
17. David Salle - ibid. (1 987).
18. G illes Deleuze - o p .c it (1981).
19. G illes Deleuze - ibid (1981).
2 0 Gilles Deleuze - ibid (1981)
21. G illes Deleuze - ibid (1981).
22. G illes Deleuze - ibid (1981).
23. G illes Deleuze - ibid (1981).
24 Bacon's practice concentrating upon the transformative and the transforming o f shapes appears, at this point o f contact, precisely correspondent to a generalized Deleuzian interpretative scheme.
25. G illes Deleuze - op .cit (1981)
"La viand e e s t cet état du corps où la chair et les os se confrontent localem ent, au lieu de se com poser structuralem ent".
Deleuze euphonizes th e important function in Bacon's compositional strategy of the vertebral colum n - it is not that it essentially provides the body with a solid/stable support structure but in contrast it o pe rates virtually as a m easure/marker against which the deviations of the flesh can be measured. Deleuze suggests that we may discern here some of the reaons for Bacon's fascination with sce n e s o f the crucifixion - the sublim e religiosity o f the crucifixion show s an attempt to counter the body upright towards the radiance of the heavens and altenatively all transcendental elevation is counteracted by the weight pulling the flesh downwards towards its own anim alistic base condition. As Deleuze states " ... la viande a une tête par laquelle elle fuit et descend de la croix". Bacon uses the animal form in such a way that returns the observer to human form and renders therein a heightened understanding of it. 'T h re e S tudies for a Crucifixion" (1962) "A Crucifixion" here and elsewhere in Bacon's oeuvre is not a descriptive title and less a reference to an actual event. It is, rather, a generic term for an environm ent in which bodily abuse is dispensed to one or more persons and one or more other persons gather to bear witness. "It may b e unsatisfactory" Bacon said to David Sylvester in 1963, "but I haven't found another subject s o fa r that has been as satisfactory for covering certain areas o f human feeling and behaviour" H e also added on this occasion: "One of the things about the cruicfixion is the very fact that the central figure o f Christ is raised into a very pronounced and isolated position, which gives it, from a form al point of view, greater possibilities from having all the different figures placed on the same level The alteration of level is from my point of view very im portant".
R ubric 15, "La traversée de Bacon", initially identifies Bacon as a qualified/m odified
inheritor of an Egyptian haptic aesthetic but continues prim arily to exam ine specifically
Bacon's treatment of the traditions of colour from Van Gogh/Gauguin/Cezanne. This tradition
locates its sensations in m odulations of colour - colour not as a distinct opposition, but as
a convoluted oscillation/graduation or analogical (as opposed to digital) variation. "C'est
la couleur, ce sont les rapports de la couleur qui constituent un monde et un sens haptiques,
en fonction du chaud et du froid, de l'expansion et de la contraction" (61 ). In the remaining
segments of this rubic Deleuze produces a more comprehensive definition o f the particular
colourist strategy that Bacon develops. Firstly the colourist approach is distinguished from
those in which the m odulation o f light is the dominant practice. "On appelle coloristes les
peintres qui tendent à substituer aux rapports de valeur des rapports de tonalité, et a
"rendre" non seulem ent la fo rm e , m ais l'ombre et la lumière, et le tem ps, par ces purs
rapports de la couleur" (62).
W ithin colourism itself, how ever, there are several subdivisions that m ay be discerned.
Firstly there is the Cezanne tradition: "La m odulation par touches distinetes pures et
suivant l’ordre au spectre, c'était l'invention proprement cezanienne pour atteindre au sens
haptique de la couleur" (63). However, Deleuze extends this scheme defining another possible
different colourist m odulation that separates itself from the Cezanne option; in this case
the division of flat background and foreground figure is contrasted in the respect by a vivid
tone and saturation in the background that renders it not only a quality of "passage" from one
colour to another, but a com plete sense o f m ovem ent/transform ation/m odulation and in a
secondary capacity, broken tones for the foreground form which construct another type of
“passage" in which the colour appears to be animated. It is this post-Cezanne mode that is
attributable to Bacon's practice.
Rubric 16 "Note sur la couleur" suggests that colour is the ultimate transform ative force,
the principle modulator in Bacon's artistic design. In previous sections, Deleuze identified
the m otivating elem ents o f Bacon's strategic technique o f perm utation as
stnjcture/figure/contour. This analysis is now amended as Deleuze situates these elements
as com posite e n titie s in a m ore extensive perm utational/modulatory assemblage
influenced/administered by the vibratory power o f colour: "tous les trois convergent vers
la couleur dans la couleur." (64) In Bacon's paintings colour modulates the background
surface and additionally operates its effects on the foreground figure - colour is clearly
the generative n e xu s o f Bacon's art. In the paintings o f David Salle we travel across a
changing space that is filled with reverberations, qualifying encounters, partial
resolutions and restless confrontations Salle creates this climate by, like Bacon assigning
a m ajor role to co lo u r: warm red/lurid orange/brilliant white and hesitant grisaille. Salle
uses colours as significant, individuated genres in which the image is reflected.
Appropriating a te rm from Alois Riegl, Deleuze treats Bacon's logic o f sensation as "haptic",
in order to dem onstrate that it is correspondingly optical and manual, an art that surpasses
the spiritual and m ate ria l.(65) Rubric 17 "L'O eil et la main" states:
"P o ur q u a lifie r le rapport d e l'oeil e t de la m ain, et les valeurs par les quelles ce rapport
passe, il ne s u ffit certes pas de dire que l'oeil ju g e et que les mains opèrent. Le rapport de
la m ain et d e l'oeil est infinim ent plus riche, et passe pa r des tensions dynam iques, des
reneversem ent logiques, des échanges et vicariances organiques....Enfin on parlera d'haptique
chaque fois q u'il n'y aura subordination étroite dans un sens ou dans rautre... mais quand
la vue e lle -m êm e découvrira en soi une fonction de touche qui lui est propre, et n'appartient
qu'a elle, d is tin c te de sa fonction optique"
(Gilles O eleuze) (66).
In Bacon's art-practice Deleuze identifies Bacon's individual technique fo r inserting the
m anual into the o p tical as being ascribed to a process of considered/relative injection,
apparent in the sw e e p of the hand/the stroke/the sm ear that eventuates the disfiguration
phase o f the fig u re and accesses analogically a series o f alternative/precipitant
representations. T hu s the haptic, as Deleuze relates in the concluding lines o f "Logique de
la sensation", is the overcoming surpassing ("dépassement' - the French word introduced to
translate the Hegelian "Aufhebung") of hand and eye into a superior logic - that of the haptic
In his work on film-theory, Deleuze interprets the attention o f Jean-Luc Godard to the
cinematic-signifier as a "pedagogy o f the image" (This filmic-analysis will be elaborated
m ore extensively in the proceeding section).
Extending this analysis it is possible to interpret the practice o f David Salle in a
concomitant style - the simplification of the image, or, conversely, the rendering com plex
o f the image, affords an instruction in viewing things and their representations alike in new
ways (67). Salle is, as Deleuze figures Bacon, almost a "scientist" o f the visual arts, an
inventor/operator of a great picture-making machine - using the space o f the picture fo r
operative experim ents - ("opératoire" occu rs recurrently throughout "Logique de la
sensation") - paintings become virtual laboratory experim ents relating to the power and
function of im ages Deleuze, in general, characterizes artists as workers (figures o f
production in the sense o f "L'Anti-O edipe") or as conceptualist/thinkers sim ilar to
philosophers "Logique de la sensation" m ay be seen to initiate Deleuze's unique "pedagogy
o f the image", constructing examples of a painterly practice that deform s/transform s the
w orld to regain the intensity o f perception and in order to enable us to achieve a
new/innovative perspective.
ANIMAL NITRATE (THE IMAGE OF CHANCE)
NOTES
1 Gilles Deleuze - Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation 2 vols Paris: Edition de la diffie'rence (1981).
2. David Salle - in "David Salle, An Interview with David Salle" by Peter Schjeldahl, New York: V in tag e C o nte m po rary Artists, Elizabeth Avedon - Editions (1987).
3. D avid Salle - ibid (1987).
W ith in the context o f the h istory o f painting, the fem ale nude has featured as an obje ct surveyed/displa yed for the p rivilege d m ale gaze of spectator/ow ner (As a category o f representation this category has emblamatized conventional projections of male desire) W om en are not presented as essentially them selves but rather as objectifications of a presumed male subjectivity. This obje ctification w a s prim arily justified by the elevation of the nude to the "high -art" status o f the cla ssica l academ ic tradition. Traditionally one of the exem plarly exam ples of artistic expression, th e nude was integrated into mythological/biblical/historical them es that generated diverse/dramatic effects. The genre functioned to reconcile the conflict between propriety and sexual pleasure. However, by the mid-nineteenth century the genre began to d isin tegrate. In term s o f a rtis tic convention, it was no longer incontrovertible that the presentation of the nude should appear within a thematic context The resultant consequence was realized by the progressive developm ent of the nude depicted prominently in unidealized modes o f depiction. G iven its principle status within the classical canon it was therefore inevitable that the nude would com e to adopt a central role within the iconoclastic force of modernism - the nude that transgressed/inverted the erotic ideal, (e g Edouard Manet"Olym pia"(1863)/Pablo Picasso "Daem oiselles d’A vig non" (1907)/Willem de Kooning *Women 1" (1950/52)). M a n e f s "Olympia", frequently acknowledged as the first modem masterpiece, is a radical departure from p revious app roa ches to the n ud e, and at the tim e was highly controversial.
N o longer a subm issive and seductive ephemeral offering, "Olympia" is self-confident and confronta tion al - fixing her eyes on the view er in a m atter-of-fact defiant directness. She appears to know, as a prostitute, he r position as a perfect/complete commodity. (See: W alter