Upon the Scents of Paint: Bacon and Synaesthesia

Abstract

Francis Bacon's interest in the synaesthetic imagery of the playwright Aeschylus is well known. Synaesthesia is a condition in which the stimulation of one sense causes a perception to occur in another sense. For a synaesthete hearing a sound can, for example, trigger the perception of a colour. This article examines a number of ways in which Bacon's paintings can be seen to rouse senses other than the visual. Many of his artworks encourage auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and/or tactile responses in the viewer. It is therefore possible to look at Bacon as a painter who actively discourages oculocentrism. The article also pursues the implications that the literal presence of sensory stimuli other than the optical in an exhibition space has for a spectator's reception of visual artworks. It draws on the differing physical experience between the mounting by Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum of Art of what was largely the same exhibition – the 2008–9 retrospective Francis Bacon – for its arguments.