‘Seeing-as’: The Modality of Looking in Bacon’s Portraiture

Abstract

This article examines Francis Bacon’s treatment of portraits of sitters who were close to him – a closeness that is seen in the intimacy of their portrayals. Bacon cut through the surface to capture the energy of a person. This study articulates Bacon’s pictorial problem by arguing for a particular way of ‘seeing-as’, to draw on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy, that involves the ‘noticing of an aspect’ or ‘dawning of an aspect’. Interpreting Bacon’s portraits by using Wittgenstein’s understanding of perceptual concepts and the phenomenological perspective of the immediacy of experience presents a novel way of looking at his work.