Turmoil

Yesterday I wrote in a post that within chaos there is also beauty — even a form of order. That statement is not revolutionary; it is almost an ontological constant. In semiotics, as in language itself, many symbols and oxymorons embody this dual condition.

The tension between order and chaos is not accidental. It is the dynamic that makes perception possible — at least within our human dimension of reality.

We would not recognize health without illness, joy without melancholy, light without having crossed darkness. And here comes the unsettling edge: there cannot be winners without losers. Between those poles exist countless gradients, and most of us inhabit those middle tones. But that is not the point here.

Head VI, Francis Bacon, 1949

What happens when someone refuses to remain in that comfortable spectrum?

Francis Bacon — the painter, not the philosopher — did not merely explore turmoil; he weaponized it. His work fractures the presumed equilibrium between order and chaos. The viewer is not allowed distance. The image shakes, distorts, destabilizes.

In his paintings, color, flesh, and motion collide in a choreography that feels both violent and precise. Conscious and subconscious overlap. Horror coexists with compositional rigor. Chaos does not defeat order; it inhabits it.

Turmoil, then, is not disorder. It is structure under pressure.

Turmoil