SFX: Haunting violin 

NARRATOR:  

That figure in the chair? That’s the Pope. When we think of the Pope, we might think of an all-powerful spiritual leader. But in this work by Francis Bacon, he sits alone, isolated in an empty chamber. He’s swaddled in his robes almost like a baby, with just two owls for company.  

SFX: Owl ruffles feathers 

Bacon insisted that his paintings of the Pope didn’t have anything to do with religion. He claimed it was just that the pontiff’s robes gave him an excuse to use purple. And, maybe color was Bacon’s motivation. We’ll never know for certain. But this much is clear: from the 1940’s to the 1960’s, Bacon made dozens of paintings like this. Screaming Popes. Silent Popes. Grotesquely twisted-up Popes.  

Then there’s that face – the features. He looks like he’s liquefying before our eyes. 

SFX: Liquefying/melting sound shifts mood to a strange, atmospheric echo chamber, footsteps on marble, discordant violin, church bells, distant moans, hushed whispers, organ, owls hooting –  

In interviews, Bacon was quoted as saying: 

CHARACTER VOICE (BACON):  

People always seem to think in my paintings I’m trying to put across a feeling of suffering and the ferocity of life.  

But I don’t think of it at all in that way myself. 

You see the very fact of being born is a very ferocious thing, just existence itself as one goes between birth and death.  

It’s not that I want to emphasize those things, but if you work as close to your nervous system as you can, that’s what automatically comes out…. Life…is, just, filled really with suffering.  

And despair. 

SFX: Soundscape  

I think that man now realizes that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being.  

SFX: Owl ruffles feathers 

That he has to play out the game without reason.

SFX: Soundscape slowly fades