January 25th 2025 | Daily Art find

Miroir de la Tauromachie | Francis Bacon, 1990

Welcome to the wild wild west! I am currently obsessed with art that is made to be hung together, and this triptych is no exception. Art that comes in multiples is so easy to adapt to your personal space because it gives you some control of the size. You can easily elongate the piece for a larger space by hanging them farther apart or keep it concise by hanging them one after another. A series like this where the scene does not flow from one work to the next could even be hung separately if you so desire.

Before I translated the title, before I had even looked at the painting for 2 seconds, I immediately knew I was witnessing bullfighting. The action appears so clearly, but when you look closely it becomes a little less obvious. The image of the bull is not that explicit, but I'm sure anyone could look at this scene and quickly understand it. The full understanding and visual is a combination of elements that contribute to a literal representation of a bull as well as elements that build up a characterization of a bull. There is a wildness to the figure that gives an essence of violence which is commonly associated with bulls. The vertical sections in the 1st and 3rd artworks seem to represent a crowd observing this spectacle. All these things vague generalizations easily create the image and feeling of a bullfight. Honestly, the more I look at it, the more confused I get.