As part of a day-long event, 'Bacon, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis', held at King’s College London on 7th September 2023, Professor Dany Nobus of Brunel University London gave a talk entitled ‘Francis Bacon’s Eyes: Blindness, Portraiture, and the Derangement of the Senses’. The event was a collaboration between the Estate of Francis Bacon and KCL’s Centre for Philosophy and Art. This talk was chaired by Professor Sacha Golob of KCL.
Nobus begins by referring to Franck Maubert's conversations with Bacon, in which Bacon pondered that his art might constitute an analysis of himself, and the 'derangement of the senses' to become a poet/seer, as Arthur Rimbaud wrote to Paul Demeny in 1871.
From considering derangement of the sense of vision, Nobus goes on to define ten modalities of what he terms 'blindness', citing Bacon paintings where the subject is not looking directly at the viewer. Nobus references related thoughts on art and seeing from others, such as Charles Baudelaire and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
After the talk there are questions from the audience, including from Professor Alenka Zupančič.