francis bacon

there's a new francis bacon retrospective at the met. i stumbled upon this picture of him posing next to meat. i think its pork. it must be pork. then look at the painting.

bacon once said that he wanted his pictures to "look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and memory, a trace of past events as the snail leaves its slime." 

a friend then told me that marcel proust had a similar childhood memory.  he discussed the trace of human slime, which he likened to that of a snail, except that he used the analogy to describe his first wet dream.