Francis Bacon (1954). Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef [oil on canvas]. The Art Institute of Chicago.

A theme of death is repeated in this work. The hanging animal carcasses are clear, but the figure has a distinctly dehumanized, ghoulish appearance. This combination of subjects is placed in a dark and simplified cubical space, like a prison cell, or coffin. Bacon seems to be stating that the treatment of animals in their consumption is a form of cannibalization, and that in so doing we begin a transformation into flesh-eating monsters and lose our humanity. 

The rough and somewhat indistinct rendering of the scene leaves an impression that what we are seeing is shifting from the world of the living and that of the dead. The subjects have a wraith-like character which is enhanced by the manic expression of the man, the violent treatment of the animal halves and the uncompromising geometry of the space they occupy. The surrounding geometric darkness is possibly the spirit-world, or land of the dead, dimension of where these figures are arranged in the world of the living. 

Bacon is using an analogous color scheme of purples, reds and oranges. Pictorial depth is built on the overlapping nature of the subjects and a space roughly based on single-point perspective. While the canvas is stable, the slightly elevated viewer perspective, emotional content and equivalent dimensions of the canvas give this work an unmistakable sense of asymmetry and tension. Most formal choices bind; emotional and conceptual choices edge the composition towards disorder. A consistent and disturbing development of the subjects creates some question as to what the center of focus should be, clearing up room for that emotional content. 

World War II laid the foundation to Bacon’s artistic style. He served as an air raid warded for the British during Nazi Luftwaffe bombings of London and the horrors he witnessed are directly translated into his visual expressions. This sense of terror is enhanced by Bacon’s formal choices and the desperate screams reflecting off of the harsh walls of the chamber the figure is trapped within.