Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Beauty In The Slaughterhouse: Francis Bacon’s Books And Painting

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Bacon en toutes lettres, Centre Pompidou, Paris (through January 20)
Francis Bacon: Late Paintings, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (February 23 – May 25)

Reviewed by Sarah Stewart-Kroeker and Stephen S. Bush

Humans are susceptible to puncture and cut, and in the end, like all dead organic matter, we’ll spoil. Whatever else we are, we’re meat. Francis Bacon’s paintings incessantly remind us of these truths. Whereas Pablo Picasso’s cubism was perspectival and worked from side to side—merging left, center, and right, Bacon’s is physiological and works from the inside out: interior, surface, and exterior. Organs and bones intermingle with skin and hair. In his oeuvre, the human subject itself serves as the memento mori, it is always figured and disfigured, fleshy and skeletal, animated and decaying.  [Read more…]

Imperial Nightmares: Mindhunter And The Dark American Psyche

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by Alci Rengifo

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. — Friedrich Nietzsche. 

It is hard to doubt that many inhabitants of the American imperium are going insane. The irrational nature of sudden, public outbursts of violence escalates to new levels of horror every year. The recent bloodbath in Las Vegas has raised many, quite necessary, debates over the gun-crazed culture that frames the American mindset, but little attention is being paid to the actual mental state of the republic. Surrounded by hyper-capitalism, predatory competition, and an increasingly isolated way of living, new monsters are being bred and formed, to roam the countryside and inflict new body counts. It is almost fitting that the current White House occupant is himself deranged, because shouldn’t a leader be a mirror image of his people?  [Read more…]