During World War II, Francis Bacon was seen unfit to be serve in the armed forces because he has struggled with asthma his whole life. He dated this as the moment from which he considered himself committed to art from that time on. Bacon felt his first successful piece was Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), an abstract triptych that consists of three frightening figures with their mouths unnaturally open wide and their necks stretched out to an extreme degree. The figures are grotesque and gruesome. Upon first look you don't know that they are really even figures until you look at the one on the far left because it has a full head of hair. Without the title of the triptych you wouldn't know that the figures are at the base of a crucifixion, unless you know what you are looking at. The name of these paintings informs the viewer that it is a religious painting.
Francis Bacon describes this painting as a piece about the inhumanity of the world. That at one point someone thought that would be a good way to teach people as a whole to not disobey the Roman rulers.*
*. "Bacon, Francis." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 28, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T005594.
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