The Flesh and Bodily Reduction - Comparative Analysis of Gnaw and Three Studies for a Crucifixion

Gnaw is a Minimalist installation by Janine Antoni, formerly located at MoMA. It consists of two 600-pound cubes - one made of chocolate and one of lard, both in one room. The artist chewed on both and spit out the pieces she bit off to be repurposed for the other part of the installation. In another room is the spit-out chocolate, formed into an empty heart-shaped chocolate box, and the spit-out lard, mixed with wax and pigment and formed into lipstick tubes. Three Studies for a Crucifixion is a series of three paintings by Francis Bacon, located in the Guggenheim Museum. These paintings all depict torn-apart flesh of unrecognizable identities with an uncompromising red color palette. Both pieces use themes of physical flesh and the bodily human condition. They also both use the reduction and stripping of the flesh to point out certain vulnerabilities: human mortality in Bacon’s case, and women’s defenselessness against misogyny in Antoni’s case. 

Gnaw, Janine Antoni, 1992

Three Studies for a Crucifixion, Francis Bacon, 1962

Gnaw has several elements that highlight the experience of women, beauty standards, the traditional role of a woman in society, and how men view women. The blocks of chocolate and lard are the raw materials of the final products: the chocolate box and the lipstick. The chocolate box is something men traditionally give women as a gesture to earn their affection, and the lipstick represents what women must do to present ourselves to men for the sake of beauty. Those pieces are physically separated from the chocolate and lard cubes, which occupy a separate room. Those cubes represent the more unseen, ugly side of being a woman. The messy bite marks taken out of the chocolate and the lard slowly falling apart during the exhibition are meant to feel gross to look at. The medium of chocolate represents desire, and the bites show an animalistic desperation to satiate. This, of course, mirrors both how women are viewed and how women feel. Women are objects of male desire, and we become less desirable the less pure and untouched we are. I would also argue that the haphazard chew marks around all the edges of the cube represent how men’s objectification can chip away at a woman’s spirit and identity with no impact on the men inflicting it. Keeping the two parts of the exhibition separate can show that there is a side of women’s experience that is the kind society likes to see, and there is a side that is shameful and overlooked. The lard can also represent the beauty standards of women, where our value is dependent on how thin and appealing our bodies look. So the presence of such a high quantity of lard is gross to the viewer and points out how society views fat and indulgence. Antoni’s choice to chew away at these materials herself creates an incredibly personal connection to her physicality with the piece. The pieces carry the carvings of her teeth and remnants of her saliva. Looking at the pieces and seeing that the bite marks belong to a person invokes a feeling of personally interacting with and seeing the artist’s presence. 

Three Studies for a Crucifixion creates a very primal viewing experience for an audience. Bacon uses some abstraction of form to create identity-less, species-less beings. But the fleshy, bloody, bony forms do not need an identity or species to feel real and personal to the viewer. He confronts the viewer with their own mortality and the softness of their body. Each of the three paintings has a different action and perspective. The leftmost piece has a first-person view, where legs are emerging from the bottom of the canvas, as if the viewer is looking at their own legs. The skin of the legs is peeled open, exposing muscle, bone, and blood. In front of the viewer are two men who are looking towards the viewer but are walking away apathetically. The middle painting depicts a mess of flesh, organs, and blood splayed out on a chair. The form does not look human, but its pose on the chair and the shapes that make it up imply it can’t be anything except a human. The body in this painting feels static, but the blood around it has lots of action and movement, which gives the piece active violence. The rightmost piece shows a mangled body sliding down a vertical wall, possibly a crucifix. It has a sense of slow action, as part of the body has settled onto the ground, but part of it is still suspended against the wall. In front of the body and the wall is a shadow of a figure. The shadow descends to the bottom of the canvas, implying that this piece, too, has a first-person perspective. This time, though, instead of being the victim of violence like in the first painting, you are a bystander looking upon it. The first two paintings have black window shades covering the windows, making the space feel tight and inescapable. All three paintings seem to take place in different parts of the same orange and red, circular room. It can be interpreted as one person sitting in the center of the room and looking around, their legs on one side and their shadow on the other. This would fit with the title of the pieces in the way that all three are different views from one central gutted, or crucified, figure.

The bodies in all three paintings appear to have mismatched body parts. By taking certain body parts, like a ribcage or a mouth, out of the contexts we expect them to be, Bacon invokes an uneasy, visceral feeling of recognizing our nature as merely being sacks of skin carrying bones, blood, and organs. “Bacon believed that animals in slaughterhouses suspect their ultimate fate.” In these paintings, he shows humans what it is like to be confronted with their inevitable death, trapped in a small, isolated space, like how an animal in a slaughterhouse might feel. 

Both Gnaw and Three Studies for a Crucifixion confront the audience with these forms of the human body with the intention of making the viewer uncomfortable. In her piece, Janine Antoni uses the chewed, carved food to, at the very base level, make the audience feel a bit disgusted. A lot of what makes her piece effective is the subconscious way the audience can feel what she intended them to. What could make chocolate, something that universally represents desire and indulgence, undesirable? What volume of gnawed at food feels so uncomfortable that it can seem to occupy an entire room? These ideas will undoubtedly be communicated to the viewer, even if the more conceptual, metaphorical ideas are not. Francis Bacon’s piece has much more direct, metaphorical impact since there is little room for more interpretation after the first read. The fleshiness and bloodiness of the figures are enough to immediately convey to the audience the idea of our own mortality and the fragility of our bodies. Through the use of gore, Bacon uses our natural empathetic and survival instincts to create a visceral reaction. Antoni’s use of food induces more nuanced feelings around metaphorical consumption that takes more thought and questions to create the connection to the human, female body. That difference is very representative of the movements that these two pieces came from. Conceptual Art is much more about the idea and intention behind that art than the physical object itself. Post-war art from the United Kingdom tended to be heavy-handed, with figurative art that had a strong focus on human psychology and existentialism. 

Both pieces have this strong connection to stripping the human body and the intention to use the viewer’s natural instincts to inform the meaning of the piece. Antoni’s lard cube had its own significance in the materiality, as it slowly collapsed and began falling off its stand throughout the exhibition. The lard cube’s natural decay over time, especially still being posed next to the solidly intact chocolate cube, has a connection to the themes of mangled bodies in Bacon’s paintings. The lard, being a solid white, gives it a much purer, cleaner death, but a death nonetheless. Both cubes being reduced with the bitten off chunks used to form a new product shows that their original form could be chewed away completely, with the only trace of their existence living on in those products. Once the collapsed fat cube has broken down enough to have no shape left, is it still the same object when its value is gone? What would remain of us if we gave all of ourselves to forming a facade to please men? Would we have no whole form or substance, only to be left with blood and bone? 

The leftmost painting in Three Studies for a Crucifixion features two figures who appear to be observing the viewer. This piece appears to have a first-person perspective, with the viewer seeing their own torn-apart legs. The figures looking at the viewer seem to be at least apathetic or neglectful, or at most, the ones inflicting the violence. Those men could be tearing pieces out of the viewer and then walking away, leaving the viewer’s body cut open and vulnerable. Are those men in the painting taking from the viewer’s body for their own gain? Did they stop their violence once they saw no more value left in the body, when everything is torn apart and nothing is intact? Antoni’s chocolate cube has enough of it chewed away that even though there are still hundreds of pounds of pure chocolate left, the entire piece is rendered undesirable and gross. Once the skin of the human body is taken apart and the physical exterior is gone, are the remains valueless, despite still being part of what makes up a human? 

These two art pieces come from different time periods, with artists of different cultural backgrounds. The intentions of the works are stark compared to each other, but have a lot of nuanced overlap when looked at more deeply. Janine Antoni’s perspective comes from an intention of expressing women’s experiences with how men and beauty standards can strip away what a woman truly is in order to turn her into what others want her to be. Francis Bacon’s work explored human mortality and our true nature as animals. They both overlap in themes of the human, physical body, and what is left of us when certain parts are torn apart or eaten away.