Olivier de Sagazan

Sagazan is a French artist, whose work ranges from painting to sculpture and performance. He often creates layers of
clay around his body mimicking human features, and then distorts them with paint and tools, creating a convincing
illusion of violence and deformity. These works are often documented in films or in series of photographs, allowing the
viewer to see a disturbing and grotesque transformation into a more primal or disquieting creature.

What likely makes these pieces so unsettling is their uncanny nature, as explored by Sigmund Freud. This means that
due to their semblance to reality, the man-like forms and their distortions seem far more frightening - as Freud says,
they belong to, ‘That class of the terrifying that leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar.’

The fact that the clay is built onto Sagazan’s

body is what gives it this most anatomical and
disturbing quality, real flesh blending with false
flesh, the colours applied on top blending the
two. The images below show this quality, the
differences from his real face being clear.
Sagazan is seen carving into his own face in
the uppermost image, elongating his mouth,
and in the bottom left image, his body is not
just distorted with clay, but also long exposure
times and image overlaying.

This clearly relates to my work due to the

distortion of forms in a disturbing manner.
However, while my pieces have a political
background, it is Sagazan’s belief that
destruction of the human form brings us closer
to nature, which is a likely explanation for why
his pieces seem to make his form blend
between that of a man and a beast.
Henry Tonks

Tonks began his working life as a surgeon, and later became a draughtsman. His anatomical knowledge of humans
influenced his art, allowing him a vast ability at interpreting the human form, something he used to create realistic
images of faces.

The below oil paintings are taken from the ‘Faces of Battle’. These were produced after Tonks’ time in the military,
and in these oil pieces he distorted these anatomically accurate faces to attempt to raise awareness in the general
populace of the horrors of war. The subdued colours lend the images a sickly tone, the disruption of the faces and
scarring, alongside the fully torn off jaw of the right hand image are deeply disturbing, inspiring emotion in the viewer
and overall certainly enlightening them to the disasters caused by war on a level which can be understood by a
layperson.

The parallels between these paintings and my work are clear when looking at the wounds and disfiguration, and
thematically, they also are intended to spread an ideology against horrifying actions caused by disconnected leaders.
Francis Bacon

Bacon was a figurative painter, who focussed on portraiture. He often abstracted figures and faces, making series of
paintings which are all variations upon the same original image.

His art is quite sombre, contrasting rich reds with subtle colours in the bottom paintings, ‘Three Studies for a Portrait of
Henrietta Moraes’, creating a sense of the disfigurations being deep, bloody wounds, while the cool blues used in
areas of skin making the faces almost corpselike. The upper right image is quite skeletal, the distortion redefining the
structure of the face to make it look gaunt. Once again, the colours are subdued, their pallid nature making the face
seem even more like necrotic flesh or bone.

The variations and repetitions are very similar to my pieces, especially due to the fact that they are also distorted
portraits. The repetitions themselves give a sense of further mutability than single pieces, the disintegrations of the
faces being related to Bacon’s obsession with mortality - this being the main theme in his later works and portraits.
This is a morbid topic, and while most would not want their face to be defaced in such a way, the images created are
incredibly impactful, with strong parallels to traditional abstracted faces like those painted and sculpted by Picasso -
one of Bacon’s inspirations.