ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that an analysis of Gilles Deleuze in the context of Francis Bacon could help to change the ways in which the arts are currently represented and practised in schools, especially in terms of 'subjectivity' and learning. 'Subjectivity' and 'meat' are powerfully inter-linked in Bacon's paintings and for Deleuze, and point to the visceral and transversal representations of identity, practice and thought that the artist's work affords. The expression 'the meat' that Deleuze uses in his book about the Irish painter, Bacon, is employed in a non-psychoanalytic rendering of the body that attempts to express the complex vitality of the lived body over time. Deleuze at this point is emphatically showing how rhythm can lead to non-equilibrium understandings of phenomena. The truth of applying Deleuze to the arts lies absolutely in the opposite direction; that is, it is to produce sensation, and to thus extend the levels by and through which art can penetrate subjectivity.
