FRANCIS BACON'S ABSTRACT STRATEGIES to represent the surface of the furies' skin in Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) and the flayed bodies of Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962) can be intercepted by Gilles Deleuze's treatment of the painter's oeuvre according to notions of descent (fall) and flesh (meat)--two elements contained in his underused notion of incarnation. Incarnation brings to mind the idea of descent (the spirit coming down) and flesh (the spiritual clothed in skin). The term is seldom used by Deleuze, a materialist philosopher, but when it comes up in his corpus it is concerned with the virtual and the actual and, most importantly, with the concept of the diagram, which has implications of systematic scale in his philosophy.
