Becoming-Violence, Becoming-Synesthesia: On the Pope, Velazquez and Bacon

Each image, when taken separately, operates as good art in and of itself, as a staple of art history classes around the country. But what occurs as they are placed side by side, as they become intimately intertwined, relentlessly forging a new composition? Does one jamb the circuit of the other, which is to say, does the one overshadow the other? Or, perhaps, neither is privileged? Perhaps, they inform each other, produce a mutual circuit, a new mode of seeing altogether. It would seem such is the case. For this nuptial does proffer the strange, the unfamiliar: the tense calm of Velazquez encountering the disturbed anguish of Bacon. A chilling violence overtakes us, telling us at each moment: “This is no ordinary seeing.” Indeed, this is a seeing construed according to a very peculiar movement: a (guilty?) pope violently transformed before our very eyes.

This is not the movement of the cinematic image, nor is it the movement of our everyday lives. Whereas the cinema proffers an ever-modulating frame, a stream of still-images creating an illusion of movement, here, the frames are unsettlingly still. There is literally no movement of the frame. Nevertheless, there is a movement of some sort here. And like the cinema, this movement is occurring behind our backs: just as the moving-image of the cinema is composed of still-frames, the movement of which is constituted by our seeing and not the image itself, here, we are seeing two images that are moving somewhere, but not in and of themselves. This movement, like all movements, occurs behind our backs. And yet, this movement is just as apparent as any other movement.

So, then, what is this movement? It is a movement of violence. That is to say, this work disturbingly displaces us: seeing Bacon’s tormented pope, our bodies begin to writhe, convulse, palpate violently. This work is no longer mere depiction—it is an aggressive performance of violence itself, shamelessly intertwining seer and seen: as we become privy to this strange motion, we become violence. We perform violence—in each sensory mode! A wholly synesthetic performance, then.

Hence, we can finally see this movement for what it is: a synesthetic movement. And don’t be mistaken—this odd motion does not privilege violence; it is the movement of everything. We are always and already engaged in a synesthetic movement, unbeknownst to us; like the movement of life, this movement streams behind our backs. And, don’t mistake this movement for Kant’s “free play” either. This is not a movement of a mental state; rather, this is the movement of phenomenology. And it is an impossible movement, a movement composed of seer and seen intertwining always and already—a movement bereft of opposition between subject and object. And to see this movement: perhaps it is this odd space of seeing—if only we could see movement—that allows us to recast our eyes, and perhaps, to get a little closer to seeing what it is to see synesthesia.