Triptych–August 1972

The dates of the last two triptychs are included in their titles, indicating that Bacon intended them as almost diary entries into a very bleak period in his life.

[5] In this work Dyer is presented as a figure struggling in vain to survive; in the triptych of 1973 he is finally defeated, naked and vomiting into a toilet basin in one panel, in another wandering towards an open door to lay down and die.

He is depicted as muscular and strong, but restless, ill at ease, and the two panels are filled with senses of movement and tension.

This compositional structure may have been influenced by Matisse's Bathers by a River, which also uses geometric forms to separate three figures and create wide bands.

[1] As in all of the Black Triptych's, doorways predominate, and form a menacing and foreboding presence, symbolic of death and the void the subject is about to pass through.

It is this doorway that emits the darkness, represented by black paint, that overwhelms and literally consumes the representations of Dyer, removing large parts of his flesh.

[8] Bacon first introduced this motif in his 1965 Crucifixion, however while that work was set in an open and public space, the figures in these panels are isolated and alone.