The King Of Pain: Sonny Liston Remembered

At 24 feet wide and 8 feet tall, THE KING OF PAIN is one of the most extreme paintings of our time. It reprises Francis Bacon’s adoption of the triptych as a formal device, while preserving the poignancy of Bacon’s portraiture, but on an astonishing scale - 100 times lifesize.

Sonny Liston, the baleful 1960s anti-hero, is treated sympathetically.

The conversation between portraiture and mark-making is intensely poignant when it comes to portraits of boxers. The “violence” done to subject matter, from Picasso to Bacon, here connects with the legacies of real physical hurt carried on a boxer’s face.

The King of Pain conveys the truth of this in explosive fashion.

This museum grade artwork is an almost exact contemporary of Damien Hirst’s TIGER SHARK in Formaldehyde. Some have suggested that these two juggernaut London artworks from the 1990s are natural stable mates.

There’s a lot to be said for this. Each projects massive existential weight. Both convey a sense of imminent threat. In one corner you have the ultimate expression of 1990s British conceptual art. In the other you have an extreme take on the ethos of School of London expressionism.

A tantalizing prospect? Absolutely! Could it happen? Yes!

Like many of the Monumental Heads, The King of Pain echoes the pathos of Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias, which reflects on the idea of human grandeur erased by the sands of time.

Fiona Starr, M.A. Leeds University

April 2024