Anglo-Irish “Distortion”: Double Exposure in Francis Bacon’s Portraits and Beckett’s The Old Tune

Many critics—most notably Michael Billington, James Knowlson, Jane Alison Hale, Erik Tonning, and Peter Fifield—have discussed the painter Francis Bacon’s probable influence on the visual images in Samuel Beckett’s work for the stage, particularly the disembodied mouth in the 1972 play Not I.1 This, however, is not the only way in which the work of these two artists is connected. Both men, each from an Anglican family residing in Leinster, shared an interest in depicting their exile from Ireland by superimposing two images on top of one another in their work.2 Bacon depicted the “fragmentation of self ” that results from exile by superimposing two faces on one another in his portraits.3 “Distortion, or contortion, in Bacon’s pictures sometimes occurs by his superimposing one image on another,” and the resulting obscured faces, especially those in his