Amidst the disciplined crowds that were tiptoeing noiselessly in odd angles trying not to obstruct each other’s views of the Francis Bacon paintings at the Tate, there stood a very thin and tall creature with a shaven scalp, pale and frail, in front of his triptych of a Crucifixion.
It took a while before long eyelashes betrayed her as a young female and till then one could only comment on how stick-like the legs were and about the manner in which the left shoulder of a simple, dark blue coat fell looking at it from the back.
She had stood in front of this particular painting for a long time, chin at hand, face contorted in deep thought, while around her people constantly changed places. She may as well be invisible.
If it was true that most people would rather not look when sickness or death is looming then all this professed appetite for framed carnage was even more striking.
Despite the cheerfully colored backgrounds and the secondary actors who looked as if they couldn’t care less, -or because of that-, one could not shake the feeling that the black stains all over the left and right canvasses were not ordinary. They reminded one of flies caught in the act of feasting on rotting flesh, more animal than human.
Bacon should be around to connect the dots creating another web of lines starting from where reality springs to where the canvas ends. Time was rushing head-on from the young woman’s side to its proper annihilation.
She kept looking on as crowds went by.
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