Wrestling with Francis Bacon (Understanding Two Figures)

In this article Francis Bacon's 1953 painting Two Figures is approached thr ough an archive consisting of popular and banal visual and written texts th at are related to social/sexual practices and pleasures that in the 1950s w ere increasingly identified in the popular press as 'homosexual'. It is sug gested that Two Figures can be viewed within a history of social and sexual encounters between men that were orchestrated by class difference and infl uenced by the visual and sexual economy of 1930s' German modernism. This ar ticle explores how this economy is popularized and re-presented on the page s of British and American fitness, physique, and wrestling magazines provid e a popular context for making sense of Bacon's painting. Whilst this artic le may go some way to exploring possible understanding of the painting that may have been available to some viewers when it was first exhibited in Lon don during 1953. The article also introduces 'cruising' as a historical con tingent mode of attention that organized an approach towards two figures, o r circulation around, Two Figures.