'The Applicants'

1) A Lesson In Vengeance

In the dour ages
Of drafty cells and draftier castles,
Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables,
Saint and king unfisted obstruction's knuckles
By no miracle or majestic means,

But by such abuses
As smack of spite and the overscrupulous
Twisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews,
One white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles
Of God's city and Babylon's

Must wait, while here Suso's
Hand hones his tack and needles,
Scouraging to sores his own red sluices
For the relish of heaven, relentless, dousing with prickles
Of horsehair and lice his horny loins;
While there irate Cyrus
Squanders a summer and the brawn of his heroes
To rebuke the horse-swallowing River Gyndes:
He split it into three hundred and sixty trickles
A girl could wade without wetting her shins.

Still, latter-day sages,
Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains.

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2) The Applicant


First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit----

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that ?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk , talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

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"This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade."




Sylvia Plath

"Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted."

Lucian Freud & Francis Bacon.

"Freud first met fellow-painter Francis Bacon in 1945, when both went to stay for the weekend with another painter, Graham Sutherland. Freud said of Bacon 'Once I met him I saw him a lot'; he became the person Freud turned to for stimulus and provocation. Bacon painted this portrait of Freud in 1951, working not in front of his subject but using a photo of the writer Franz Kafka, whose work Freud admires. In the following year, Freud painted Bacon's portrait in oils on a small copper plate, sitting so close to his subject that their knees touched. That portrait was stolen in 1988 when it was on loan from the Tate to a gallery in Berlin ( same portrait as above, of Bacon )."

"Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud Common Stature as Painters, Diverse Approaches to Painting.
Contemporaries Francis Bacon (born Ireland, lived / active United Kingdom, 1909-1992)
and Lucian Freud (born Germany, lived / active United Kingdom, 1922- ) shared many unique
qualities: tough constitutions, whimsical attitudes, and independent minds (Sinclair 175).
Those minds developed compelling depictions of the human form, figures that often evoked harsh feedback from modern critics.

Despite similarities in personality and artistic experience, Bacon and Freud painted with distinction.
These longtime friends, considered inseparable in the 1950s and 1960s, orchestrated portraits of each other that demonstrate individualism (Farson 250-251).

Each extended his singular, personal approach to a wide range of imagery.

Should one survey a Bacon retrospective, he or she would find psychological anguish –
content that some might consider more appropriately produced by the grandson of Sigmund Freud (Feaver 14).

While Bacon intentionally disfigured for emotional impact, Freud frequently created more realistic human bodies that otherwise lacked humanity. Their lifeless expressions and colors create the presence of an object rather than a person.

Although Bacon publicly decried any expressionist tendencies, and Freud purported a more compelling interest in impasto brush strokes over personal expression, both artists often provoked passionate interpretation of their work (Peppiatt 31).

Undoubtedly, Bacon and Freud are both respected as masters of modern figurative painting.
By comparing the style and technique of Bacon’s triptych "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" (1969, oil on canvas) with Freud’s "Reflection with Two Children" (self-portrait, 1965, oil on canvas), the artists’ distinct characteristics emerge.

Bacon believed distortion to be the most appropriate way to convey fact with his paint (Yard 8).

Many interpreted his asymmetric forms as chilling, riled, fevered with anxiety and terror, immersed in emotional turmoil. When asked about his content – which ambitiously included humans and animals, figures and portraits – Bacon replied:
“People always seem to think that in my paintings I’m trying to put across a feeling of
suffering and the ferocity of life, but I don’t think of it at all in that way myself.
You see, just the very fact of being born is a very ferocious thing, just existence itself as one goes
between birth and death. It’s not that I want to emphasize that side of things – but I
suppose that if you’re trying to work as near to your nervous system as you can, that’s
what automatically comes out … Life … is just filled, really, with suffering and despair."

More, here..... :Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud 'once a surrealist', an original, truly great figurative painter with an equally brilliant & influential talent in his friendship with Bacon.

Freud paintings from the top one to four.

1)Boy Smoking (1950-1) by Lucian Freud

2)Large Interior W11 (after Watteau) 1981-3

3)Lucian Freud (English, 1922-), Francis Bacon, 1952, oil on metal, 17.8 x 12.7 cm, Tate Gallery, London.

4) ‘Head of a Man’, Oil on canvas, 1968.

Followed by, two of Bacon's paintings of Freud.

5)Francis Bacon, Portrait of Lucian Freud, 1951.

6)Portrait of Lucian Freud on Orange Couch
1965, Oil on canvas.

Videos, first from top to second respectively:
1) Bacon, London Weekend Television, 1985.
2)Lucian Freud, Retrospective at Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 16 Feb to 8 June 2008.