...Bacon lost no time in facing down the circumstances of his death. In 1971, 1972, and again in 1973, he re-created the scene in triptychs that are among his finest and most harrowing achievements.From Francis Bacon by John Russell
Already in November and December 1971 he was able to reconstruct and memorialize the hotel staircase, the inside of the room and the last moments of George's life...
The central panel, with its rare effect of depth suggested by the staircase, recalls the Paris hotel where Dyer committed suicide. The figure about to pass through the door is disappearing into its own shadow, while a naked arm reaches up to insert a key in the lock. The mirror portrait in the right-hand panel, based once again on Deakin's photograph, gives the model two Janus-like heads facing forwards and backwards. In the left-hand panel an aerial structure merges with the convulsed body of a man whose ambiguous posture hovers uncertainly between pain and pleasure. For Bacon, Dyer was the incarnation of a masculinity that combined tension, energy, mobility and instability. Central to the artist's relationship with his model was a powerful emotional charge that Bacon was to explore repeatedly, trying to go ever further in understanding it.
