Violence and trauma and the influence of Francis Bacon in the paintings of Robert Hodgins
Date
2012-01-18
Authors
Jansen van Vuuren, Nathan
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Abstract
In this research I critically examine features of violence and the related notion
of trauma as articulated through visual-formal language in the figurative
paintings of contemporary South African artist Robert Hodgins. The significant
influence of Francis Bacon pertaining to these themes is considered in
examining Hodgins’ presentation of the human body within extremes. Both
artists’ paintings focus on the human figure and allude to violence and the
experience of trauma in their iconography but I also examine their expressive
handling of medium as critical to reading such artworks in terms of trauma. I
examine recent trauma theory and its application to the visual arts to locate
my discussion around Hodgins’ paintings as approaching trauma through
certain affective dynamics. I then examine Hal Foster’s analysis of Andy
Warhol’s Death in America images and how the concept of trauma and affect
are seen to be significantly internal to such artworks. I subsequently consider
how Hodgins’ paintings may be seen to address psychological trauma as an
experience of an event that the subject cannot fully integrate into his/her
experience. My primary aim is to investigate the strategies and approaches
which Hodgins employs and how the works are realised as a transmittable
language of sensation through the visual medium of paint and its subsequent
affect. As such it is an enquiry into how Hodgins’ paintings can be seen to
embody experience. In a final chapter I discuss my own concerns in the
paintings submitted towards this degree in light of the above.
Description
M.A. Faculty of Humanties, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011