Flayed carcasses (“meat-wings”) Symbolism
Flayed carcasses are a stark emblem of the body reduced to meat, making mortality immediate and inescapable. In art, they operate as a visceral memento mori, collapsing ideals of purity or authority into perishable flesh. The motif aligns with long-standing Western traditions that confront viewers with death and the material fact of the body.
Flayed carcasses (“meat-wings”) in Figure with Meat
In Francis Bacon’s Figure with Meat (1954), two skinned carcasses flank a screaming pontiff like grotesque wings, fusing sacred authority with abattoir imagery. Stage-like lighting, a cage-like armature, and paint handled as raw flesh intensify the symbol’s force: the carcasses frame and debase the enthroned figure, turning signs of sanctity and power into sheer, vulnerable tissue. Here, the meat-wings insist that sovereignty is inseparable from the body’s fate—perishable, exposed, and destined to decay.
