FRANCIS BACON RETROSPECTIVE, MET, PART I

Flayed torsos.  Crouching forms.  Screaming Popes.  These are some of the searing images that impact the viewer of the Centenary Retrospective of Francis Bacon's difficult work at the MET.  This exhibit is rivetting for its breadth of materials brought under one roof- torn photographs, faded newspaper clippings, images that Bacon drew on again and again to create the deeply interrogative interface between physiological sensations and the visual field.  One sees the impact of the Soviet Revolution, Nazism and the Algerian Revolution in the formation of Bacon's aesthetic of violence. Bacon 's chilling excursions into the underside of animality is disconcerting and ravishing to behold.  A disemboweled inverted torso in a triptych on the theme of crucification demands the viewer pause to contemplate its luscious vibrancy of color and bleeding organs.  Bacon's work forces one to have a theory to continue viewing as one becomes complicitous with his immersion in the darker side of human consciousness.  The grimacing mouths, bared teeth, eyeless heads, and defined contours of flesh open up that which one dares not acknowledge, sensations beyond the visual frames of rational knowing, of enlightenment discourse.