Portraits, the nocturnal theatre

Bjørn Ransve

Green head, 1979

Oil on board, 125 x 100 cm

I found Jacki Wullsclagers article "At home with history" in last weeks arts section of FT interesting. She writes about the exhibition ‘Francis Bacon and the Masters’, Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, Norwich.

The theme centers on portraits by Bacon and old masters, Picasso and "the distortion of the body to make it central to the art again".  

"I'm like a grinding machine, I've looked at everything, and everything I've seen has gone in and been ground up very fine" - Francis Bacon. 

 It evoked some personal reflections on a painting previously mentioned in this blog: "Green head" by Bjørn Ransve. The brutal simplicity makes it more real than life itself. The head, both held up and reduced to a representation of the body part and anatomy of "the head". No history, no social weight or value, just that of the flesh and perception of it – minimalistic, overwhelming and floating in space.