Oscar Bernal's large painting, Francis Bacon and Torquemada in the Barbershop is, among other things, a sly allusion to the impossible reflection of the barmaid in the mirror behind her in Edouard Manet's great 1882 masterpiece, The Bar at the Folies-Bergére that hangs in London's Courtland Institute. The barmaid's actual angle of reflection could not have existed but the superb composition of the painting took precedence over that physical impossibility.

In Bernal's case the actual physical Bacon is nowhere to be seen. His reflection is accompanied in the mirror by the image of the nearly anthropomorphic barber pole on what would be his right side in the falseness of the mirror, and his left side in actual reality if indeed he had been in the shop. Bernal's reinterpretation of one of Bacon's early vicious nightmarishly threatening creatures in the bottom left of the painting growls at the spectator as if interrupted from a clandestine ritual while a second weird and frightening doglike creature docilely sits upon the lap of the Inquisitor, Torquemada The Torturer, either of which could quickly spring from the barber's chair and decimate the intruding viewer in an instant. The barbershop itself is a rather unnerving location easily referring to one's loss of power or strength ala Sampson and Delilah. And then of course Torquemada's mirrored reflection reiterates Manet's artistic liberty dictum with a second impossible reflective angle intertwining artistic license with an air of implicit licentiousness. The whole thing is enough to make one shudder. But the mastery of forms, the inventive composition, not merely aesthetically but also psychologically, even philosophically, combined with a restrained yet glowing use of color and tone and light, are captivating enough to elicit more than one return visit to this marvelous painting. ___M.M.E.

Edouard Manet's great masterpiece,
The Bar at the Folies-Bergére
that hangs in London's Courtland Institute.

(Note the impossible angle of reflection of the barmaid in the mirror.)

Oil on canvas  38 1/2 x 51 inches 1882