Head VI is a 1949 painting by the Irish-born, English figurative artist Francis Bacon. It is the last of six panels making up his "1949 Head" series, which are largely modeled on Diego Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X. Applying forceful, expressive brush strokes, Bacon placed the figure within a draped glass cage. The intended effect is of a man trapped and suffocated by his surroundings, screaming into an airless void. Head VI was the first of Bacon's paintings to reference Velázquez, whose portrait of Pope Innocent X haunted Bacon and inspired his series of over 45 "screaming popes". Head VI contains many figurations that were to reappear throughout his career; the geometric cages are present as late as the 1985–86 Study for a Self- Portrait—Triptych. In 1949 Bacon was a highly controversial artist, best known for his 1944 Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, and as the enfant terrible of British art. The curator Lawrence Gowing wrote that the "shock of the picture, when it was seen with a whole series of heads ... was indescribable. It was everything unpardonable." Today the panel is considered among Bacon's finest.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_VI
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1775:
The Second Continental Congress of Britain's Thirteen Colonies adopted the Olive Branch Petition in the hopes of avoiding war with Great Britain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Branch_Petition
1865:
Royal assent was given to an Act of Parliament allowing the Talyllyn Railway to carry passengers by steam haulage – the first narrow-gauge railway in Britain to do so from the start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talyllyn_Railway
1950:
Korean War: In the first encounter between North Korean and American forces, the unprepared and undisciplined U.S. Army task force was routed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Osan
1977:
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq overthrew Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in a military coup d'état. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Zia-ul-Haq
2004:
Indonesia held its first direct presidential elections, which resulted in the election of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as President of Indonesia after the second round on September 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_presidential_election,_2004
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
suspension: 1. The act of suspending, or the state of being suspended. 2. A temporary or conditional delay, interruption or discontinuation. 3. The state of a solid or substance produced when its particles are mixed with, but not dissolved in, a fluid, and are capable of separation by straining. 4. The act of keeping a person who is listening in doubt and expectation of what is to follow. 5. (education) The process of barring a student from school grounds as a form of punishment. 6. (music) The act of or discord produced by prolonging one or more tones of a chord into the chord which follows, thus producing a momentary discord, suspending the concord which the ear expects. […] 7. (vehicles) The system of springs and shock absorbers connected to the wheels in an automobile or car, which allows the vehicle to move smoothly with reduced shock to its occupants. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/suspension
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Money is in some respects like fire; it is a very excellent servant but a terrible master. --P. T. Barnum https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/P._T._Barnum