Dicing the meat : Bacon in the middle of an arts-based sandwich

Even a cursory analysis of Gilles Deleuze's (2003) book on the Irish artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992) reveals the disparity between the resultant philosophy, his paintings, and most contemporary arts-based educational practice. Bacon was a tortured individual with an alcohol problem, and inner demons that propelled his art into the depiction of ever more contorted, self-distorting strangeness. However, even though his work was often lampooned and ridiculed whilst he was alive, his reputation as being perhaps one of the major British painters of the twentieth century has continued to grow since his death in 1992. In contrast, arts-based practice in schools tends to 'play it safe', conforming to normatively pre-defined ideas of 'what art can be'. This chapter will argue that an analysis of Deleuze (2003) in the context of Bacon could help to change the ways in which the arts are currently represented and practised in schools, especially in terms of 'subjectivity' and learning. 'Subjectivity' and 'meat' are powerfully inter-linked in Bacon's paintings and for Deleuze, and point to the visceral and transversal representations of identity, practice and thought that the artist's work affords. For the purposes of this chapter, the example of Bacon's work which will be referred to is the Portrait of Michel Leiris (1976).