Recently I wrote an essay on Farncis Bacon's figuative paintings under the critical theory of psychoanalysis and found some interesting conclusions in relation to his own biography and the fragmented bodies in his work.
What I mean by fragmented is theway in which he painted figures in such a choatic representation, with his implemented violent brushstroke, brash skin tones of pink, sometimes extended to deep purples, yellows, blues, the rearranged body parts and facial features allow a horrific structure of the human form to chaotically come into place.
However, what I find particularly unique is how Bacon often presents a human body juxtaposed with a kind of beast-like creature breaking through (Head I, 1948). In fact, in some of his works it becomes very difficult to differentiate between the two and we’re almost left to decide whether the formation is of some unidentifiable creature or a human. 
Evident in Bacon’s formation of the human body is a kind of visceral form, where the artist is portraying a state of mind represented through a fragmentation of the physical human form. Therefore, the object becomes abject, under reflection of the complexities of human mentality.
Abjection, under the theory of Julia Kristiva, is essentially an object of horror. However, the object suffers this horrific characteristic. It is desired but restrained due to the threat it imposes on its object.
This is where it got interesting...
This idea of the abject, I realized, has a very close relation to Sigmund Fr
eud's theory of the ID, EGO and SUPER EGO. What Frued give the term ID two was the realization of the human psyche pocessing a kind of primitive instinct, just like the animal breaking through in Bacon's figurative paintings. However, this primitive state of mind is supressed by the super-ego, the moralistic and critical self.
This abjection the object is suffering could easily be interpreted into the presence of the ID.
But what is the abject or ID in Bacon's work?
The ambiguity of the physical forms in Bacon's work are by no means subtle, but barely recognisable, difficult to familiarise ourselves with, never quite sharp and geometrical, but rounded and floaty, like that of a dream. Could this be due to Bacon's unconscious scanning, his technique in painting bei
ng impulsive rather the meticulously planned, therefore allowing Bacon to adhere t
o that primitive instinct, the Freudian ID.
Under this particular theory I found Bacon's self-portraits and numerous paintings of his companion George Dyer most appropriate, as opposed to other portraits. This is because we have know
ledge of the biography of Francis Bacon and of his relationship with Dyer, whereas, we pocess much more ignorance towards other figures present in Bacon's portraits.
Considering that Bacon was born Irish, his homosexuality may have been deemed upon if his super-ego was in any way grounded by Irish-Catholicism, in which homosexuality is taboo. Therefore, homosexuality may have been his definitive abjection.
Francis Bacon’s relationship with George Dyer, therefore allows us to realize Bacon’s frustration at their shared abjection of homosexuality. There are numerous paintings in which the fragmented body is in fact a portrait of George Dyer(Three Studies of the Male Back, 1970), the fragmentation forming a characteristic of a burrowing head of an animal and his head at times seems to wrench away from the audience in sorrow, despair or perhaps, shame?
Yet, the way in which Bacon fragments Dyer to expose his abjection may not even be Dyer’s own reflection on himself, but rather Bacon’s reflection on Dyer. The abjection in
the painting, therefore, may be Bacon’s realization of himself and Dyer being his abject. According to John Russell’s documentations, “To some of Bacon’s admirers, George was a nuisance: an intrusion upon the world of high culture to which ‘their’ Bacon belonged” and there is a high probability that Bacon’s supereg
o, when in charge, also believed Dyer was no other than a ‘nuisan
ce’ to him.
Dyer committed suicide in 1971 in the hotel room they shared on the rue des Saints-
Peres, only a couple of days before the opening of his exhibiti
on at the Grand Palais in Paris. This tragic event influenced many paintings of Bacon’s for years to come. Several triptychs evolved; Triptych- In Memory of George Dyer, 1971; Triptych, 1972; Triptych May-June 1973. All of these works again expose a strange resentment of, or disgust with homosexuality and Dyer.
Kristeva presents an interesting assumption on death, that death protects us, it purifies us.
rniture, illuminated by black backgrounds(Triptych August, 1972), or in Triptych- In Memory of George Dyer, 1971, subsumed by dark, threatening deep red decor and flesh pink walls. 
This seems to take on the Freudian theory of ‘Mourning and Melancholia’(1915), and in particular the idea of ‘introjection’, where Bacon’s mourning now repre
sses feeling
s of hate towards the deceased, but then intead of directing his hatred towards Dyer he has reflected it upon hims
elf. Therefore, it is a love for Dyer that now takes on an aggressive fragmentation of himself, as he indicated in a conversation he once had with David Sylvester that,
“...one of the terrible things about so-called-love- certainly for an artist, I think- is the destruction.”
