Contour

Deleuze shows us how Bacon operates:Still, it is important to understand the affinity of the mouth, and the interior of the mouth, with meat, and to reach the point where the open mouth becomes nothing more than the section of a severed artery, or even a jacket sleeve that is equivalent to an artery. (23) an open mouth, jacket sleeve, and a severed artery. 

The contour relates the disparate objects rather than any type of essence or regulated grammar.  The contour is the grammar and sentence that Bacon’s painting speaks.

For example, Bacon begins with Velásquez’s Pope Innocent X, but must pass the object through his diagram. The contour of the smile becomes a scream—the intensities pass through the Pope and express an affective logic.  Bacon creates the abject Pope: a Pope that is in Bacon’s situation.…it is something that is going to happen, but has not yet acquired the ineluctable, irresponsible presence of Bacon’s newspapers, the almost animal-like armchairs, the curtain up front, the brute meat, and the screaming mouth. Should these presences have been let loose? asks Bacon. (46)

Deleuze tells us how Bacon passes Velásquez’s Pope through a diagram.  This is Bacon’s diagram and no one else’s.  When something passes through Bacon’s diagram, a deformation process occurs—in Bacon’s case this is visually evident—and the object passes through an aesthetic analogy.  When something passes through the diagram it break with mimetic resemblance and becomes analogical (A : B :: B : C).  In terms of this analogy, we are curious as to what happens at the threshold of the pair of colons.  It is a leap.

Bacon creates resemblances through non resembling means.