16.12.13

Francis Bacon


The British artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992) was one of the most original and powerful painters of the twentieth century. He was particularly noted for the intensity and paradoxical nature of his work. Bacon achieved fame and notoriety for his disturbing figures and his preoccupation with bare flesh, wounds, fluids and the torment of the human condition. His imagery communicates loneliness, violence and degradation. Importantly, it does so in a grotesque manner.

Bacon, with Self-Portrait, 1973

Francis Bacon was born October 28, 1909, in Dublin. At the age of 16, he moved to London and subsequently lived for about two years in Berlin and Paris. Although Bacon attended no art school, he began to draw and work in watercolor about 1927. Picasso’s work decisively influenced his painting until the mid-1940s. Upon his return to London in 1929, he established himself as a furniture designer and interior designer. He began to use oils in the autumn of that year and exhibited a few paintings as well as furniture and rugs in his studio. His work was included in a group exhibition in London at the Mayor Gallery in 1933. In 1934, the artist organized his own first solo show at Sunderland House, London, which he called Transition Gallery for the occasion. He participated in a group show at Thomas Agnew and Sons, London, in 1937. Bacon painted relatively little after his solo show and in the 1930s and early 1940s destroyed many of his works. He began to paint intensively again in 1944. His work gained prominence only after World War II. By this time he painted the human figure, subjecting it to extreme distortions that made it look bizarre and disturbing. His first major solo show took place at the Hanover Gallery, London, in 1949. From the mid-1940s to the 1950s, Bacon’s work reflected certain influence of Surrealism. The pictures that made his reputation were of such subjects as an opened-mouth figure bending over and partly covered by an umbrella (Figure Study II, 1946) and a vaporizing head in front of a curtain (Head II, 1949). These startlingly original works were considered to be powerful expressions of anguish, remarkable because of the grandeur of their presentation and unusual painterly quality. By the 1950s Bacon had developed a less elusive treatment of the human figure and based his work on clippings from newspapers and magazines or from the ninethinth-century photographs of humans and animals in movement by Eadweard Muybridge. He also drew on such sources as Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1649–50), Vincent van Gogh’s The Painter on the Road to Tarascon (1888), and Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925). The combination of motifs drawn from completely unrelated sources was usual in Bacon's imagery. At the same time contemporary imagery was given a grandeur presentation akin to that of Baroque masterpieces. Bacon's first solo exhibition outside England was held in 1953 at Durlacher Brothers, New York. In 1950–51 and 1952, the artist traveled to South Africa. He visited Italy in 1954 when his work was featured in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. His first retrospective was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in 1955. Bacon was given a solo show at the São Paulo Bienal in 1959. From the 1950s through the end of Bacon's painting career and life, in the early 1990s, the recurrent theme of his work was the isolation and anguish of the individual. He often painted a single figure, usually male, seated or standing in a windowless interior and framed by a geometric construction, as if confined in a private hell. His subjects were his friends and lovers, and himself. Working almost without preliminary sketchs, Bacon used expressive deformations to convey every possible nuance of feeling and tension. His painting technique consisted of using rags, his hands and whorls of dust along with paint and brush. In 1962, the Tate Gallery, London, organized a Bacon retrospective, a modified version of which traveled to Mannheim, Turin, Zurich, and Amsterdam. Other important exhibitions of his work were held at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1963 and the Grand Palais in Paris in 1971; paintings from 1968 to 1974 were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1975. Although Bacon had consistently denied the illustrational nature of his paintings, the facts of his life led art critics and historians to draw links between the personal life of the artist and the subject matter of his paintings. An example of this was the suicide of his model and lover George Dyer.1 Bacon's impressive Triptych May-June 1973 evokes Dyer’s suicide and shows him shadowed in a door frame, vomiting into a sink and dying hunched fetus-like on a toilet. Bacon admitted this painting to be a most personal work and one which verges on illustration. Yet, he also kept each panel of the triptych framed individually and arranged it so to alter a logical sequence and to avoid storytelling. In a period dominated by abstract art, Bacon stood out as one of the greatest figurative painters. Often large in scale, Bacon's works bring back traditional themes but in an iconoclastic, involving the grotesque and the meaningless. Retrospectives of Bacon's work were held at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1989–90 and at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 1996. The artist died of heart failure brought on by asthma in Madrid, on April 28, 1992.

Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait, 1973

14.11.13

Bacon bate récord mundial: u$s 142.405.000.-


El 12 de noviembre de 2013 el tríptico de Francis Bacon titulado Tres estudios de Lucian Freud (1969),[1] que presenta tres impresionantes retratos del mencionado artista figurativo europeo del siglo XX,[2] alcanzó el precio récord de venta en subasta pública: u$s 142.405.000.-,[3] o, si se prefiere, € 105.800.000.-, resultando así ser la tercera obra de arte más cara de toda la historia (tras solo Los jugadores de cartas de Paul Cézanne, 1890, por el que se pagaron € 191,600.000.-, en venta privada, y El sueño de Pablo Picasso, 1932, vendido por € 116.000.000.-, también en venta privada).[4]

Freud: Agriducemente Baconizado

El cuadro en cuestión —un óleo dedicado al amigo y rival de Bacon— fue subastado por la firma Christie's en el Rockefeller Plaza de la ciudad de Nueva York en una operación que no llegó a durar seis minutos.[5]

En un comunicado, la casa de remates Christie's expresó que "la obra fue vendida por 142,4 millones de dólares tras seis minutos de intensa puja en la sala y por teléfono".[6] Hasta ese momento, el récord en materia de subastas públicas correspondía a la venta de El Grito (pastel de Edvard Munch, 1895), que en mayo de 2012 había alcanzado los 120.000.000 de dólares."[7]

Tres estudios de Lucian Freud es una pintura compuesta por tres lienzos. Muestra a Lucian Freud, las tres veces sentado en una silla contra un fondo amarillo. El cuadro formó parte de la gran retrospectiva de Bacon en el Grand Palais de París (1971-72).[8]

Francis Bacon
Tres estudios de Lucian Freud
1969
Ampliación de la imagen: intentar click-derecho

Referíendose a la importancia de los trípticos en su quehacer artístico, Bacon alguna vez expresó:

Los trípticos son lo que más me gusta hacer, y pienso que eso puede estar relacionado con el deseo que algunas veces he tenido de hacer cine. Me gusta la yuxtaposición de imágenes separadas en tres lienzos diferentes. Si mi trabajo tiene alguna calidad, a menudo siento que tal vez es en los trípticos donde se encuentra la mejor de ellas.[9]

Nieto del padre del psicoanálisis, Lucian Freud solía por su parte describir a Bacon en términos tan categóricos como elocuentes:
« el más sabio y el más salvaje ».[10]

Celebration Time. A todo esto, evidentemente, lo sabía muy bien el Guasón. Así, no casualmente, en una de las mejores películas de Batman, rodada en 1989 y con Jack Nicolson, el inquietante villano, sin titubear, le agarra de golpe la mano a uno de sus secuaces, justo a punto de destrozar uno de los lienzos ejecutados por el "Goya de la Era Atómica", y, con esa sonrisa imborrable que el personaje no puede sino llevar en la cara, le advierte en asertivos términos:
« ¡NO! -ESE ME GUSTA, BOB. DEJÁLO. »

Para quien escribe estas líneas, nunca será suficiente el subrayar que, a Bacon, la película con Jack Nicolson seguramente le hubiese gustado, pero en su versión francesa:



¿Y, en la película, qué imagen específicamente le gusta al Guasón?

Bacon, Cabeza rodeada de carne, 1954

Referencias
1. Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud: An Icon of Twentieth Century Painting, Christie's, comunicado de prensa, 12 de noviembre de 2013 (accedido 13 de noviembre de 2013).
2. Catálogo dedicado al cuadro de Bacon: Nueva York, Christie's, Francis Bacon: Three Studies of Lucian Freud, 1969, noviembre de 2013, 213 páginas, con la obra, detalles, fuentes de inspiración, contexto general y citas diversas, disponible en Internet (accedido 14 de noviembre de 2013).
3. El cuadro fue subastado en por Christie's en el Rockefeller Plaza de la ciudad de Nueva York. El precio alcanzado de la obra de Bacon fue de u$s 127.000.000.- (€ 93.890.000.-), a los que, agregándorseles los impuestos y comisiones propias de la operación, forman el total de u$s 142.405.000.- Acerca de lo sucedido, véase Récord mundial por una obra de Bacon, La Nación, Buenos Aires, 13 de noviembre de 2013 (accedido el mismo día de su publicación); cuya base son noticias en inglés, emitidas y/o publicadas todas el 12 de noviembre de 2013: Carol Vogel, At $142.4 Million, Triptych Is the Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold at an Auction, The New York Times, Nueva York; Jon Swaine, "Francis Bacon Triptych smashes Art Auction Record", Telegraph, Londres; y Ula Ilnytzky, Francis Bacon fetches Highest Auction Price Ever, The Huffington Post, Nueva York (incluye vídeo).
4. García Vega, Mercado de arte: la tormenta perfecta, El País, España, 14 de noviembre de 2013; Los jugadores de cartas de Cézanne, RTVe, 6 de febrero de 2012.
5. Vídeo de Christie's: In The Saleroom: Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud, Rockefeller Plaza de Nueva York, 12 de noviembre de 2013: "Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale", N° 2791.
6. La Nación: Récord mundial.
7. La Nación: Récord mundial.
8. Con excepción de una muestra dedicada a Turner (fallecido en 1851), la restrospectiva de Bacon fue la única que el gobierno de Francia le dedicó a un pintor inglés.
9. Bacon, citado por David Sylvester: "Triptychs are the things I like doing most, and I think this may be related to the thought I’ve sometimes had of making a film. I like the juxtaposition of the íimages separated on three different canvases. So far as my work has any quality, I often feel perhaps it is the triptychs that have the best quality" (Looking back at Francis Bacon, Londres, 2000; Christie's).
10. Freud, citado por Akerman, disertación pública para el ciclo "Arte e Identidad"; Buenos Aires, British Arts Centre y Asociación Argentina de Cultura Inglesa, Ser y no ser: identidad en el arte de Francis Bacon, 2 de octubre de 2013; Akerman a su vez citó las palabras de Freud, rememoradas por Bruce Bernard y publicadas en Londres, British Council, From London: An exhibition of works by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Leon Kossoff, Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach and R B Kitaj, organised by the British Council in association with the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 1995: « (He) hit Soho like a welcome and highly stimulating whirlwind in 1948. He seemed quite unique to me at twenty – magical – his extraordinary energy and intelligence allowing him a marvellous overflow of frivolity that came from far too interesting a person to be regarded simply as 'camp'. Lucian later described him as the 'wisest and wildest' person he had even known » (British Council: Visual Arts; accedido 14 de noviembre de 2013).

Artículo dedicado a Bacon
Gracias WKP.

17.9.13

Francis Bacon en Buenos Aires

Los argentinos ante la condición baconiana y percibéndola en carne propia: SER Y NO SER.



En términos de arte, ¿cuál es la contribución de Francis Bacon?


Francis Bacon (1909-1992), destacado artista neo-figurativo de posguerra (fotografiado por Daniel Farson).


SER Y NO SER
Identidad en el arte de Francis Bacon


Un trabajo, conferencia y presentación de Mariano Akerman

British Arts Centre
Asociación Argentina de Cultura Inglesa
Suipacha 1333, Ciudad de Buenos Aires

Miércoles 2 de octubre de 2013 - 19 hs.

Entrada libre y gratuita



Bacon, Estudio para retrato de George Dyer, óleo, 1967

La imaginería del pintor británico Francis Bacon es un fenómeno singular. Cada una de sus pinturas es vendida a precios siderales y fácilmente alcanza varios millones de libras esterlinas. Aún hoy Bacon lidera el mercado del arte y además es el pintor más caro de Gran Bretaña. Su pintura es original y provocativa. Si bien admirable por diferentes razones, deja también perplejos a no pocos.


Bacon, Figura yacente en un espejo, óleo sobre lienzo, 1971
Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao


Mariano Akerman investiga la imaginería de este misterioso artista en Inglaterra y Europa. Detecta en ella un fenómeno tan inusual como ambiguo y se empeña en establecer con la mayor precisión posible la naturaleza y el fundamento de tal fenómeno en el arte del aclamado autodidacta londinense.


El pintor en Londres, 1985 (Arena)

El arte de Bacon es extraordinario tanto por sus formas como por su contenido. Complejo y contradictorio, al igual que el artista que lo ejecutó, es misterioso, intenso y problemático. Admirable y simultáneamente preocupante, ataca por sorpresa. Trabaja directamente sobre el sistema nervioso y abre las válvulas del sentir. Resulta tan magnético como repulsivo. Es auténtico pero también inquietante. Se muestra profundo y frívolo a la vez. Atípico, quimérico, polivalente. Extremadamente sugestivo. Salvajemente humano.


Bacon, Crucifixión, óleo, 1933

Tensión, la unión de elementos incompatibles y numerosas alusiones a lo monstruoso son propias de la imaginería de Bacon. Se trata de un arte que involucra al ser humano, dejando siempre entrever algo más. Un arte que comunica fascinación con el riesgo y las situaciones extremas. Un arte que expresa el sentido trágico de la vida (la vacuidad de la existencia, su transitoriedad, su irreversible deterioro), aunque de un modo ambiguo.


John Deakin, Bacon con carcasa suspendida (Bacon con carne), fotografía, 1952

Poderoso y perturbador, el arte de Bacon involucra las características propias del género grotesco. Así, la mezcla confusa, la armonía discordante y la intencionalidad incierta no le resultan ajenas. Es el de Bacon un arte de doble filo. Un estudiado trabajo que comunica las vivencias de un hombre de posguerra determinado a pintar su paradójica "desesperación entusiasta." Y, consecuentemente, las declaraciones mismas de Bacon suelen involucrar a lo Grotesco: "La carne es vida. Si pinto la carne roja, así, como pinto los cuerpos, es porque lo encuentro muy hermoso. […] Mi pintura es una representación de la vida, de mi propia vida, que ha sido sumamente difícil. Por eso, acaso mi pintura sea muy violenta; con todo, esto es natural para mí".


Bacon, Hombre con gorra, c. 1943

Becado por el British Council en 1995, Mariano Akerman investiga la obra plástica de Bacon en Marlborough Fine Arts y la Tate Gallery de Londres. Es autor de Lo Grotesco en las pinturas de Francis Bacon, tesis, 1999. Akerman se interesa por la obra pictórica de Bacon desde principios de los años '80 y tal interés se extiende hasta el día de hoy.


Comparación por Mariano Akerman, 2008. Motivo del panel central de Tres estudios para figuras al pie de una crucifixión (Francis Bacon, 1944) ante su referente visualproveniente del texto médico Maladies de la bouche (Ludwig Grünwald, 1903). Investigación original. Todos los derechos reservados.

A través de su disertación, Akerman analiza e interpreta las pinturas de Francis Bacon considerándolas en términos de forma y significado. Examina su naturaleza y la relación entre la vida y la obra del pintor. Presenta los motivos que prevalecen en su mundo pictórico y las fuentes de inspiración de su imaginería. Remite las pinturas a su contexto histórico. Explora la singular naturaleza y móviles del arte baconiano, para presentarlos a través de un prisma original y particularmente revelador para las audiencias de habla hispana.



Invitación para la conferencia y presentación en el BAC, 2013


Mariano Akerman
Nacido en Buenos Aires en 1963, Mariano Akerman es arquitecto e historiador del arte.
Pinta e investiga desde temprana edad. Cursa estudios de arquitectura en la Universidad de Belgrano, donde en 1987 se recibe con un trabajo premiado, La naturaleza del espacio y los límites de la arquitectura. Becado desde Argentina por el British Council, en 1999 escribe su tesis, The Grotesque in Francis Bacon’s Paintings, que es académicamente recibida en términos de summa cum laude.
A partir de 1981 Akerman da conferencias en instituciones tales como el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes en Buenos Aires, el Museo Nacional de Las Filipinas en Manila, el Colegio Escandinavo Hooptes Stajärna en Taytay, la Academia Nacional de Artes en Lahore, y la Universidad Tecnológica COSATS en Islamabad.
Especializado en comunicación visual, Mariano Akerman desarrolla series de conferencias educativas en varios países para las embajadas de Bélgica (The Belgian Contribution to the Visual Arts, 2005 y 2008-9), Suecia (In the Spirit of Linnaeus: The Tercentenary Lectures on Science and Art, 2007), Francia (Raisons d’Être: Art, Freedom and Modernity, 2010), Alemania y Suiza (The Gestalt Educational Program: Theory and Design in the Age of New Objectivity, 2011).
Emprendedor independiente multidisciplinario, Akerman ha sido distinguido con doce premios internacionales en materia de arte y educación. Durante seis lustros de actividad ininterrumpida en sesenta centros de cultura e instituciones educativas nacionales y del exterior, Mariano Akerman ha dado numerosas conferencias y disertaciones.

Ciclo de tres conferencias SER Y NO SER
Universidad de Belgrano, agosto de 2009


Página de artículo de Akerman dedicado al arte de Francis Bacon (Mariano Akerman, "Bacon: Painter with a Double-Edged Sword", Blue Chip Magazine, Vol. 8, N° 88, Islamabad, febrero-marzo de 2012, p. 32).

Para mayor información:
Curriculum vitae
Perfil en LinkedIn
Entrada en Wikipedia
Pasión por la esperanza a través de la imaginación
Puente entre culturas

Ref. Ciclo educativo "Arte e Identidad", Buenos Aires, Argentina, Septiembre-Octubre 2013, conferencias ad honorem, iniciativas y emprendimientos personales, interpretación, educación, recreación.

10.8.13

Flesh and Bone


Oxford, Ashmolean Museun
Francis Bacon/Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone
September 2013 - January 2014

This exhibition will display works by these artists of twentieth century western art. A collection of paintings by Bacon and sculptures and drawings by Moore have been selected for this show to bring out the similarities and differences between their work.

Despite working in different media, Bacon and Moore were exhibited together from the end of the Second World War into the 1960s. This new exhibition aims to bring a fresh perspective to Francis Bacon and Henry Moore highlighting the important influences and experiences which they shared and exploring specific themes in their work. Bacon, regarded as one of the 20th century’s greatest painters, was fascinated by sculpture and approached Moore for lessons, whilst Moore renowned for his sculptures was an excellent draftsman and the exhibition will show the shelter drawings that first brought Moore fame as a war artist in the early 1940s.

Francis Bacon/Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone will reveal surprising parallels in the work of these two great figurative artists.

_

Dalya Alberge, "How Francis Bacon turned to sculpture master Henry Moore for help", The Observer, 27 July 2013

New exhibition shows unknown interaction between two greats of 20th-century art

Both were heavyweights of 20th-century art, known for their striking images of the human form, but painter Francis Bacon and sculptor Henry Moore kept a respectful distance – beyond shared exhibitions and some barbed mutual criticism.

Now a new picture of their relationship has emerged with the revelation that Bacon approached the sculptor to ask for lessons in his art form. Moore did not rise to the challenge, and Bacon never did create a sculpture, but imagining what might have been is exciting art historians, who discovered the story while researching a new exhibition on the two cultural giants for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford this autumn.

The revelation came from Moore's daughter, Mary, and Oxford don Francis Warner, who was a friend to both when he was a young academic in the early 1970s, and was asked by Bacon to relay the request to Moore.

Warner, now emeritus fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford, said: "Francis had become interested in taking on some sculpture. He was thinking sculptural forms – 3D. I don't think it was a whimsy, but that he genuinely wanted to see if he could expand a bit, and obviously Moore was the big man. They knew each other, but it was a guarded affection. They were like two lions in a forest, utterly different people."

Recalling Moore's reaction to the request, he said: "He [Moore] was very courteous and never followed up. That's the way he operated. [Afterwards, Bacon] did ask once. I said, 'I don't think it's gone anywhere'. He said, 'Oh well'."

The Ashmolean exhibition, titled Francis Bacon Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone, will show 20 paintings by Bacon alongside 20 sculptures and 20 drawings by Moore, lent by public and private collections and selected by Martin Harrison, editor of the definitive Bacon catalogue raisonné, and Richard Calvocoressi, director of the Henry Moore Foundation. Calvocoressi writes in the catalogue: "Given that Moore and Bacon were both figurative artists with no religious faith, who nevertheless reimagined Christian themes – [including] the Crucifixion – for an increasingly secular, atrocity-conscious age, it is surprising that this is the first exhibition to compare their achievements."

Moore (1898-1986) is revered for his large bronzes, with reclining figures among his defining subjects. He was also an outstanding draughtsman, and his drawings of London Underground air raid shelters are among the most poignant images of the blitz.

He once said: "If you are going to train a sculptor to know about the human figure, make him do more drawing to begin with than modelling."

Bacon (1909–1992), who is regarded by many as the greatest British painter since Turner, captured the pain of human existence with a nightmarish brilliance. Today, his paintings are worth millions, but in 1946 it took the Contemporary Art Societycorrect six years to persuade a public collection to accept a Bacon painting as a gift.

In his published interviews, Bacon spoke about his interest in sculpture, regularly visiting the British Museum to look at the Parthenon marbles, which "are always very important to me". He regarded Michelangelo as "deeply important in my way of thinking about form". He said: "I think that perhaps the greatest images … have been in sculpture." When he enquired about lessons, he was already internationally recognised with exhibitions in London and Paris.

But, while Moore's training included the Royal College of Art, Bacon was self-taught as a painter and he recognised the need for guidance in the intricate art of sculpting from carving to bronze casting, Warner said.

Commenting on why Bacon wanted to sculpt, Warner spoke of the "old jealousy of the painter for the sculptor" – the painter's single view compared with the sculptor's infinite views: "You can walk round a sculpture."

In his catalogue essay, Martin Harrison observes that many of Bacon's paintings have "a dialogue with sculpture", from their "monumental presentation" to sculptures painted in the foregrounds of compositions like Reclining Man with Sculpture, 1960-61.



The exhibition, which opens in September, will show how, in his 1971 painting Lying Figure in a Mirror, Bacon achieved on canvas a three-dimensional sculptural monumentality similar to that in Moore's 1951 Reclining Figure.



Calvocoressi said that Bacon was "never very complimentary about Moore's work, dismissing his shelter drawings and making other pointed remarks", while Moore apparently referred to Bacon in telling the Observer that he had no desire "to produce shocks". That makes Bacon's request all the more extraordinary, he added.

8.8.13

Al borde del abismo


Pedro da Cruz, Al borde del abismo, El País, Montevideo, 18.9.2009

Francis Bacon
Fragmento de una crucifixión, 1950
Stedelijk van Abbenmuseum, Eindhoven

CONSIDERADO, junto a Lucian Freud, uno de los pintores ingleses más significativos del siglo XX, Francis Bacon continúa fascinando tanto al público como a la crítica. Su personalidad y su obra no cesan de ser discutidas y reinterpretadas, a pesar de que han transcurrido casi dos décadas desde que falleciera en Madrid en 1992. Debido a que el próximo 28 de octubre se cumplen cien años de su nacimiento, las actividades relacionadas con la obra de Bacon se han multiplicado.

En cuanto a las exposiciones conmemorativas, la más importante es la que recientemente reunió cerca de setenta de sus obras más conocidas. La muestra, una retrospectiva con obras fechadas entre 1933 y 1991, se inauguró en setiembre de 2008 en la Tate Britain de Londres, y fue luego exhibida en el Museo del Prado en Madrid y en el Metropolitan Museum de Nueva York. Con ocasión de la exposición fue publicado Francis Bacon, un voluminoso catálogo con excelentes reproducciones y textos de autores que discuten distintos aspectos de la obra del pintor.

Cabe preguntarse cuáles son las causas de la atracción ejercida por la obra de Bacon. Son innumerables telas -a pesar de que destruyó muchas de las primeras que pintó- producto de una larga y prolífica carrera de seis décadas. Las claves deben buscarse en la total unidad entre la vida del artista y su pintura. Una personalidad conflictiva, y una vida encarada como una continua toma de riesgos, siempre experimentados con intensidad: ya fueran una serie de "inconvenientes" relaciones homosexuales, las que nunca ocultó, o excesos con el alcohol y el juego (durante unos años prácticamente vivió en Montecarlo, donde jugaba a la ruleta).

Su obra plástica fue también resultado de continuos desafíos, de la búsqueda de caminos propios para expresar plásticamente su vida personal y su entorno, con las telas como un espacio de continua lucha creativa. En varias entrevistas Bacon expresó que su intención era "atacar el sistema nervioso del espectador, y reintegrar a éste a la vida con gran violencia". Para lograr ese objetivo deformaba las figuras, aunque tratando de conservar cierta relación con la realidad: "Lo que quiero es deformar el objeto hasta lo irreconocible, pero por medio de la deformación llevarlo de vuelta a ser un registro de su apariencia".

Según Bacon, su forma de trabajar era como "caminar continuamente al borde del abismo". El resultado plástico de esa sensación, que el pintor logra transmitir al espectador, es especialmente notable en sus autorretratos, así como en los retratos que pintó de amantes y amigos. El retrato se convierte en una construcción, cuyo verdadero motivo son las diferencias entre la apariencia física del modelo y su representación. Parafraseando al pintor, las figuras son mostradas como sistemas nerviosos expuestos y agredidos. Por lo que la contemplación de las obras puede ser una experiencia reveladora, pero también una vivencia revulsiva y dolorosa.

LOS COMIENZOS. Nacido de padres ingleses en Dublín, Bacon vivió allí, con excepción de los años en que la familia se trasladó a Londres a causa de la Primera Guerra Mundial, hasta el fin de la adolescencia. La vida del joven Bacon fue marcada por un continuo conflicto con su padre, un hombre de carácter intolerante y dictatorial. La situación se agravó cuando Bacon se negó a ocultar su orientación homosexual, y finalmente fue expulsado del hogar cuando su padre lo sorprendió probándose la ropa interior de la madre. A partir de entonces Bacon se liberó de las convenciones sociales y sexuales del entorno en el que había crecido, una actitud que mantendría durante toda su vida.

En la primavera de 1927 viajó a Francia, donde iba a permanecer hasta el fin del año siguiente. En París, en la Galería Paul Rosenberg, vio una exposición de Picasso que lo impactó profundamente. Allí también vio por primera vez el film de Sergei Eisenstein Acorazado Potemkin (1925), algunas de cuyas escenas le servirían de inspiración unos años más tarde. Luego de una corta estadía en Londres, Bacon volvió a viajar a Francia, y también visitó Alemania. De regreso en Londres probó distintos trabajos, entre otros el de decorador de interiores y diseñador de muebles, y el de valet, para el que ofrecía sus servicios bajo el nombre de Francis Lightfoot. Se instaló en una casa de South Kensington, que compartió con su antigua nanny (niñera), e inició su primera relación sentimental estable con el político conservador Eric Hall, lo que implicaba un riesgo, ya que las relaciones homosexuales entonces eran ilegales en Inglaterra (lo fueron hasta 1967).

En 1930 Bacon conoció al artista australiano Roy De Maestre, quien le enseñó a usar la pintura al óleo y lo introdujo en un círculo de coleccionistas, entre los que se contaba el influyente Douglas Cooper, y pintores como Graham Sutherland. Sin estudios formales, Bacon inició entonces su carrera de pintor. Fuertemente influido por la obra de corte surrealista que Picasso realizaba en esa época, pintó Crucifixión (1933), que fue incluida por el crítico Herbert Read en el libro Art Now del mismo año, lo que dio notoriedad a su obra.

En los años siguientes Bacon expuso regularmente, pero en 1944, hacia el fin de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, destruyó la mayoría de las obras que había pintado hasta entonces. A su vez, ese mismo año, pintó un extraordinario Tres estudios para figuras en la base de una crucifixión, tríptico con dramáticas figuras antropomórficas. Bacon había encontrado un motivo, la figura humana, que sería central en su obra hasta el final de su carrera. Pintaría al hombre en una situación de conflicto y violencia, figuras deformadas que, encerradas en un entorno abstraído, sufren y gritan su dolor.

Entre sus obras más conocidas de entonces se pueden nombrar Figura saliendo de un auto (1943), Figura en un paisaje (1945), Estudio de figura I (1946). También Pintura (1946), con un hombre bajo un paraguas entre dos medias reses, y una serie de Cabezas (I-IV, 1947-49), las dos primeras sin ojos y con las bocas abiertas mostrando desparejos dientes afilados.

Hacia 1950 Bacon dio un nuevo carácter a las figuras humanas que usaba como motivo. Los cuerpos no son tan deformados como anteriormente, y son vistos aislados en espacios indefinidos, como desvaneciéndose tras gruesas y continuas pinceladas verticales, o enmarcados en estructuras geométricas formadas por delgadas líneas de color. Otras figuras están ubicadas sobre o dentro de estructuras circulares que parecen escenas de teatro. El ambiente de las obras es tenso, como en el prolegómeno de una situación violenta, o durante una catástrofe. Estudio del cuerpo humano (1949), Estudio según Velázquez (1950), Estudio de desnudo (1951), Estudio para desnudo agachado (1952) y Dos figuras (1953), tienen esas características.

LAS FUENTES. El estudio de las obras de los años 50 revela un Bacon continuamente a la búsqueda de estímulos visuales, de los más disparatados orígenes, que pudieran activar los mecanismos del proceso creador. Entre las fuentes de inspiración más importantes están las reproducciones de obras de arte de distintos períodos y procedencias, e imágenes tomadas de los medios de comunicación, ya fueran fotografías o ilustraciones, material que amontonaba compulsivamente en sus talleres (ver recuadro). Pero Bacon no copiaba las imágenes que usaba como punto de partida, sino que las deformaba, las combinaba, y, lo más importante, les daba nuevos significados.

Entre las referencias más evidentes, ya clásicas, relacionadas a imágenes tomadas de la historia del arte, se cuentan la relación entre la mencionada pintura y obras de Rembrandt y Chaïm Soutine, con similares motivos de medias reses colgadas, así como entre Estudio según retrato del Papa Inocencio X de Velázquez (1953) y Retrato del Papa Inocencio X (1650) de Velázquez.

Pero las relaciones entre las obras y las fuentes no son lineales y excluyentes, sino que en muchos casos se pueden "descubrir" varias influencias simultáneas. Las bocas abiertas de los personajes de Bacon en las dos últimas obras mencionadas tienen relación con el personaje de la enfermera del Acorazado Potemkin, que emite un grito de dolor al ser herida en un ojo cuando le rompen los lentes. La figura de la enfermera volvió a aparecer como motivo en Estudio para la enfermera del Acorazado Potemkin (1957). En los años 80 Bacon se inspiró en obras de Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, influencia que es explícita en los títulos de Edipo y la esfinge según Ingres (1983) y Estudio del cuerpo humano según Ingres (1984).

Otra de las fuentes más conocidas de Bacon es el libro de Eadweard Muybridge La figura humana en movimiento (1887), una recopilación de series de fotografías de personas realizando distintos movimientos, tomadas con intervalos regulares, y en algunos casos simultáneamente de dos o tres ángulos diferentes. Una serie con dos luchadores desnudos, que ejecutan movimientos de lucha libre, fue especialmente atractiva para Bacon, ya que le sirvió de base para obras como Dos figuras (1953), Dos figuras en el césped (1954), Figuras en un paisaje (1957), y las partes centrales de los trípticos Tres estudios para figuras en una cama (1972) y Tríptico (1991). En las obras la interacción de los dos hombres desnudos es ambigua, ya que puede ser interpretada como lucha o como acto sexual.

Un artista especialmente significativo para Bacon fue Miguel Ángel, de quien prefirió los llamados ignudi, los musculosos jóvenes desnudos que pintó -sin ninguna justificación programática- en la base de las escenas del techo de la Capilla Sixtina. El cruce de referencias es tal que el propio Bacon afirmó en una entrevista: "Muybridge y Miguel Ángel se me mezclan en la cabeza".

LA CRÍTICA. Bacon no tenía mayor interés en la opinión que los críticos emitían sobre su quehacer artístico. Entre otras cosas expresó: "Si prestara atención a lo que dicen los críticos, no trabajaría nunca" y "Por supuesto, es verdad, hay muy pocas personas que podrían ayudarme con su crítica". La visión sobre su obra varió según los contextos y las épocas, pero a grandes rasgos se puede decir que el temprano interés que despertó en Inglaterra no fue correspondido por los círculos artísticos de Estados Unidos. Al carácter revulsivo de su pintura, se sumó la condición homosexual de Bacon, asunto que, al ser evitado como tema central en los análisis sobre su obra, dificultó su comprensión. Estos obstáculos desaparecieron recién durante los años 80, con la consolidación de las teorías feministas, los estudios queer (estética gay), y la creciente aceptación de la diversidad sexual.

En el catálogo de la reciente exposición del Metropolitan Museum, Gary Tinterow publicó un texto en el que analiza la relación entre la obra de Bacon y la crítica. En un principio, a partir de fines de los años 40, el arte de Bacon fue considerado profundamente europeo, especialmente visto en el contexto de los años inmediatamente posteriores al fin de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El poder del imaginario baconiano, el horror a lo estático, y un cierto fatalismo, fueron destacados por críticos ingleses como David Sylvester, Robert Melville y Wyndham Lewis.

En cambio, los críticos de Estados Unidos consideraron su obra demasiado figurativa y narrativa, opuesta en su concepción al allí entonces dominante expresionismo abstracto, fuertemente impulsado por el influyente teórico Clement Greenberg. En ese contexto fue problemática la conexión religiosa de las imágenes de Bacon, que revelaban una incómoda visión "impía" de la tradición cristiana.

El interés por Bacon comenzó a generalizarse a partir de comienzos de los años 60, coincidiendo con dos importantes exposiciones de su obra realizadas en la Tate Gallery de Londres en 1962 y el Guggenheim Museum de Nueva York en 1963. Poco después Bacon conoció a Michel Leiris, intelectual que había tenido fuertes lazos con el movimiento surrealista, y que se convirtió en uno de los principales críticos e impulsores de su pintura.

A partir de una gran retrospectiva realizada en el Grand Palais de París en 1971, Bacon comenzó a ser considerado uno de los grandes maestros de la pintura europea contemporánea. Ese mismo año John Russell publicó Francis Bacon, uno de los principales referentes de la literatura sobre el pintor. Otra publicación importante para el estudio de los mecanismos creativos de Bacon fue Interviews with Francis Bacon, publicado por David Sylvester en 1975.

AMIGAS Y AMANTES. Hacia 1960 Bacon imprimió un nuevo giro a su pintura. La figura humana continuó siendo su motivo principal, pero pasó de crear figuras anónimas a retratar a personas de su entorno, tanto amigas y amigos como amantes. Pero el cambio en el carácter del motivo no lo llevó a trabajar directamente con los modelos, sino que continuó con su método de basarse en fotografías, esta vez de los retratados. En 1961 encargó a su amigo John Deakin, fotógrafo de la revista Vogue, que tomara fotografías de sus amigos para usarlas como fuentes.

Los retratos nunca serían realistas, sino basados en deformaciones evocativas, productos de una ambivalencia que era una de las formas de "caminar al borde del abismo". Bacon rompió con la tradición realista del género del retrato, que desde el Renacimiento fue considerado un reflejo de una realidad exterior a la que se puede acceder objetivamente, y propuso en cambio una suerte de "retrato interior". Los retratos están cargados de sexualidad, con la expresión del deseo y la excitación como temas centrales.

De su grupo de amigas, las que Bacon retrató con más frecuencia fueron Isabel Rawsthorne y Henrietta Moraes. La primera era pintora, musa y modelo de artistas (entre otros Jacob Epstein, Picasso y Giacometti), en cuya compañía Bacon acostumbraba beber. Pintó Retrato de Isabel Rawsthorne (1966) y Retrato de Isabel Rawsthorne parada en una calle en Soho (1967), inspirado en fotografías de Deakin. También pintó Tres estudios de Isabel Rawsthorne (1967), con tres retratos simultáneos (uno de ellos una pintura clavada en una pared), obra que plantea la diferencia entre la realidad y su representación. Henrietta Moraes bebía mucho, consumía distintas drogas, y frecuentaba los bares de Chelsea, al igual que Bacon. Una fotografía tomada por Deakin, en la que se la ve acostada desnuda en una cama, sirvió de fuente para Retrato de Henrietta Moraes (1966).

Bacon también pintó numerosos retratos de sus amantes. No retrató a Peter Lacy, ex piloto de la RAF con quien mantuvo una intensa y violenta relación entre 1952 y 1958, debido a que en esa época las personas de sus motivos eran anónimas. En cambio los retratos de George Dyer, un joven ladrón al que sorprendió in fraganti una noche de 1963 robando en su casa (y que fue su amante a partir de entonces), ocupan un lugar central en el corpus de la obra que creó durante los años 60. Pintó una larga serie de estudios de cabezas de Dyer, y varios retratos entre los que se cuentan Retrato de George Dyer andando en bicicleta (1966) y Estudio de George Dyer en un espejo (1968). Dyer se suicidó en un hotel de París en 1971, el día antes de la inauguración de la retrospectiva de Bacon en el Grand Palais. Luego de la muerte de Dyer, Bacon pintó varios trípticos relacionados a su ex amante, entre otros Tríptico - En memoria de George Dyer (1971) y Tríptico - Agosto 1972. En 1976 conoció a su último amante estable, John Edwards, un joven con el que comenzó una larga relación de tipo paternal, de quien también pintó varios retratos.

Otros modelos masculinos de Bacon fueron su colega Lucian Freud, a quien había conocido ya en 1943, y amigos como Peter Beard y Michel Leiris. Estos aparecen en retratos individuales o en trípticos, un formato que Bacon iba a utilizar tanto para dar tres distintas versiones de la misma persona, como para conectar entre sí las figuras de los retratados. Este último es el caso de Tres retratos - Retrato póstumo de George Dyer, Autorretrato, Retrato de Lucian Freud (1973), en el que Bacon agregó, en las telas con los retratos de Dyer y Freud, dos pequeños autorretratos ilusoriamente clavados en la pared, con lo que se "incluyó" tras las figuras del ex amante y el colega.

VARIACIONES FORMALES. En algunas de las obras individuales y trípticos que Bacon pintó a partir de comienzos de los años 70 es evidente un nuevo planteo espacial: los elementos en que las figuras humanas se apoyaban, ya fueran sillas o camas, fueron sustituidas por rectángulos negros que sugieren ventanas u otras aberturas, y que funcionan como fondo o lugar de "acción" de las figuras. Algunos ejemplos son Figura en movimiento (1985), Retrato de John Edwards (1988), Tríptico, mayo-junio 1973 y Tríptico, Marzo 1974, así como los mencionados Tríptico-agosto 1972 y Tríptico (1991).

En cuanto a los motivos, hacia 1980 Bacon comenzó a realizar obras que no incluían la figura humana, la que había sido central en su obra durante cuatro décadas. En el papel protagónico se encuentran elementos como arena, césped, agua y sangre, los que se expanden sobre la superficie de las telas. Sin embargo, tanto los motivos estáticos, en Paisaje (1978), Duna de arena (1983) y Sangre en el pavimento (1988), como los que imitan movimiento, en Agua de una canilla abierta (1982) y Chorro de agua (1988), evocan la presencia humana. Otra fuente de motivos a la que recurrió durante diferentes etapas de su carrera fueron textos literarios de la más diversa procedencia, lo que resultó en obras como Tríptico - Inspirado por el poema `Sweeney Agonistes` de T.S. Eliot (1967) y Tríptico - Inspirado por la Orestíada de Esquilo (1981).

En abril de 1992 Bacon, contrariando la opinión de su médico, viajó una vez más a Madrid a visitar a José Capello, con quien mantuvo una de sus últimas relaciones conocidas. Aquejado de neumonía, la que se agravó por el asma, fue hospitalizado. A los pocos días murió muy cerca del Museo del Prado, donde recientemente sus obras han sido expuestas junto a las de su admirado Velázquez.

Arqueología pictórica

UNA SERIE de fotografías de los talleres en que Bacon trabajó durante diferentes épocas muestran un caótico amontonamiento de pinceles, tubos de color, paletas, un espejo y algunos muebles desvencijados, todo mezclado con material gráfico que el artista apilaba, amontonaba en cajas de cartón, e incluso esparcía por el suelo. Hojas de periódicos, libros, revistas y fotografías aparecen en un desorden bestial, doblados, arrugados, rasgados, recortados y manchados de pintura.

Cosas del taller

LUEGO DE dejar la casa de 7 Cromwell Place en abril de 1951, Bacon vivió durante una década en casas de amigos y colegas. Durante un par de años el pintor Rodrigo Moynihan le prestó su taller, donde Bacon fue fotografiado por Henri Cartier-Bresson. En 1955 se mudó a un apartamento en 9 Overstrand Mansions, Battersea, donde una pareja de amigos le ofreció lugar. Finalmente, en 1961, se mudó a 7 Reece Mews; allí tuvo su vivienda y taller hasta su muerte en 1992. Cada mudanza significaba un trasiego de libros y recortes.

Hay numerosos testimonios sobre la negativa de Bacon a permitir el acceso a sus talleres. Cuando recibía a alguien, no permitía que nadie tocara nada. El ocultamiento de los materiales gráficos se debía a que eran "documentos de trabajo", sobre los que mantenía absoluto secreto. En la vivienda de Reece Mews usó una pequeña habitación de 6 x 4 metros como taller durante más de treinta años. A pesar de que regularmente realizaba limpiezas (cuando era superado por el amontonamiento), dejó tras de sí miles de piezas de material.

Luego de la muerte de Bacon en 1992, el taller permaneció cerrado hasta 1996, cuando John Edwards (designado heredero por el artista) invitó a los expertos Brian Clarke y David Sylvester a revisar el material. Dos años más tarde Edwards donó el taller completo, con todo su contenido -más de siete mil objetos- a la galería municipal de Dublín The Hugh Lane, un homenaje a la ciudad natal de Bacon. El taller fue estudiado como un sitio arqueológico, con mediciones y dibujos alzados previos a la clasificación objeto por objeto del material, el que finalmente fue trasladado a Dublín, donde se reconstruyó el taller.

Parte del material ahora perteneciente a The Hugh Lane fue clasificado y publicado por Martin Harrison en Francis Bacon, Archivos privados. El autor se rigió por dos principios: la diversidad, para mostrar la amplitud del archivo visual de Bacon, y la precisión en la identificación de procedencia y fecha de los materiales, los que fueron estudiados uno por uno con minuciosidad.

El material gráfico publicado muestra que algunos objetos están casualmente manchados, pero la mayoría fue transformada por Bacon de distintas formas: dobló, recortó, e incluso pintó partes de reproducciones y fotografías. Los materiales intervenidos funcionaban como bocetos, estudios preliminares para figuras que el artista iba a incluir en sus obras. La nueva información sobre las fuentes de Bacon es enorme. A las ya conocidas, como pinturas de Velázquez y fotografías de Muybridge, se le suman una serie de nuevas fuentes.

Harrison menciona dos obras sobre las que el estudio del contenido del taller arrojó nueva luz. En el panel izquierdo de un tríptico de 1982 (que luego fue desmantelado, y por lo tanto sin título), un pollo desplumado está colgado por las patas sobre una figura tendida en una tarima. La fuente para la figura del pollo resultó ser un libro de cocina, The Cook Book, publicado por Terence y Caroline Conran en Londres en 1980. En la página 84, en el capítulo Poultry (Aves), se ve una ilustración de cinco aves desplumadas colgadas en tamaño decreciente. La del medio tiene exactamente la forma del pollo que Bacon pintó en su obra. La información fue completada aun con otro dato: la amistad entre Bacon y Terence Conran, quien en 1987 abrió el restaurante Bibendum, luego uno de los lugares favoritos del pintor.

La segunda obra estudiada por Harrison es Esfinge - Retrato de Muriel Belcher (1979), en la que Bacon combinó imágenes de distintas procedencias. La cabeza de la esfinge es un retrato de una de las más íntimas amigas de Bacon: Muriel Belcher, dueña de la coctelería Colony Room, que el pintor frecuentaba en los años 40. La fuente fue una fotografía tomada por John Timbers en 1975, la que Bacon intervino aislando con pintura blanca la cabeza de Belcher, para así estudiar mejor su forma. La apariencia de las garras y parte del cuerpo de la esfinge provienen de una fotografía de la bailarina Marcia Haydée, ilustración de una nota sobre danza publicada en The Observer el 4 de junio de 1978, que Bacon rasgó de la página y guardó. En la obra, la garra derecha de la esfinge descansa sobre una forma que semeja un papel con letras, una posible referencia a la fuente.

Sobre el material que sobrevivió a Bacon, Harrison escribió: "Apenas nos hemos internado en la telaraña de pistas que nos dejó". A lo que Barbara Dawson, directora de The Hugh Lane, agregó: "Entrar en el estudio de Francis Bacon fue como asomarse al interior de la mente del artista".

FRANCIS BACON, ARCHIVOS PRIVADOS, de Martin Harrison. La Fábrica Editorial. Madrid, 2009. Distribuye Océano, 224 págs.

Volver a Bacon

María Sánchez

Cuando tenía 16 años, me topé con una exposición de un artista llamado Francis Bacon en un museo de Dublín. No recuerdo que me gustara, en el sentido de lo que entonces yo consideraba bello, pero sí que me impactaron dos cosas: la crueldad que transmitían las obras y el desorden absoluto del estudio del pintor, que había sido reconstruido en una sala del museo.

Creía haber olvidado esto cuando me encontré con cientos de retratos del Papa (Heads VI) llenando de gritos los muros del metro de Madrid, cuando media España hablaba de Bacon como si fuera el vecino del quinto piso, y cuando, un mes de marzo, las colas daban la vuelta al Museo del Prado. Bacon llegó a Madrid como llega el circo a la ciudad.

En esta ocasión volví a Bacon con otros conocimientos, otras expectativas, otros gustos. Sin embargo, hasta que no estuve delante de los cuadros no recordé aquel sentimiento. Volví a Bacon, volví a Irlanda y a mí misma; porque Bacon es esa bestia que hay dentro de cada persona y que tanto asusta descubrir.

Bacon es uno de esos artistas que verifican la frase "no es lo mismo la obra que la reproducción de la obra". En los libros, en los carteles del metro, en la televisión, en ningún medio provocan esa misma emoción.

Los cuadros sangrantes y calientes se contraponen con los fríos gritos que desgarran el lienzo en líneas verticales. La poca pintura expandida con fiereza enjaula las figuras en la tela y las retuerce hasta la locura. Bestialidad, contorsión, corporeidad y tensión. Impresión y expresión. Respiración y expiración.

NOTA: María Sánchez (n. 1986) es española, y realiza una pasantía de posgrado en El País Cultural.

5.8.13

Bacon in Australia


Carolyn McDowall, Francis Bacon: Five Decades of Art during Twentieth Century, The Culture Concept Circle, 12.11.2012

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. […] The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." -Sir Francis Bacon


Francis Bacon: Five Decades of Art is an exhibition ‘not to be missed’ to be held at its only venue in Australia, the Art Gallery of NSW. It is on view 17th November – 24 February 2013. This retrospective is of works rendered by that twentieth century master of post-war British art, the Irish born son of English parents Francis Bacon (1909 – 1992). He portrayed the ordeal of the vulnerable exposed human body like no other artist of his generation although unlike other artists he did not paint from life. Instead he appropriated images and manipulated them into psychological studies that shot him to a prominence. His fame hardly diminished over the next fifty years, and today still continues to rise. The show is structured around five decades, which correspond to key themes in Bacon’s development as an artist. Each decade is represented by thought-provoking works that characterize his art during that period.

His technical bravura is always harnessed to change, from the horror and meaningless bastions of death to the metamorphosis of man as he struggles from being merely meat to human or the reverse. He played with notions of the human form and its isolation and while perhaps avoiding narrative, in many ways he ended up dictating it.

Bacon was a man with a name already famous and he proved like his historical namesake, and possible ancestor philosopher and wordsmith Francis Bacon (1561-1626), that he was a complex and often conflicted individual. They both seemed to share a vision for that of seeing their own universe as a challenge to be contemplated and meditated upon, with all the world a stage on which ‘man’ stood as a symbolic portal for expanding knowledge.

Whereas the older Francis Bacon view could be enlightening, uplifting, purposeful and inspiring the modern Francis Bacon’s viewpoint was for most of his life the polar opposite; one in which humankind seemed to have been deserted by the love of God or any other human being on earth.

All his works while bold and graphic are emotionally raw and he would become perhaps the bleakest chronicler of humankind during the twentieth century, while being celebrated as one of its greatest artists. As Bacon himself explained: ‘… they always talk about this violence in my work. I don’t think my work is violent at all. You’ve only got to think about life.’

As his illustrious ancestor was renowned for making humankind think, perhaps that is also his greatest life achievement and their most important connection.

With over 50 rare paintings, some of them monumental in size, as well as photographs and archival material from Francis Bacon’s studio at London, the exhibition covers every decade of his career. It gives a fascinating insight into his life and work, if you can in reality survive the experience.

There is nothing really light hearted on view, the works range from the pensive and most shocking works of the 1940s to the exuberantly coloured and visceral large paintings of the 1970s and 80s.

This is an exhibition four years in the making and the works have been drawn from 37 collections including private collections and Australian and international institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York, Tate Britain at London, the Pompidou Centre at Paris, and the Francis Bacon Estate.

Shown alongside the paintings is a wealth of archival material from his mostly chaotic London studio, offering a fascinating insight into the artist and his creative process.

Bacon’s childhood when you read about it could not be viewed by any stretch of the imagination as ‘normal’ or remotely like one that anyone else would begin to experience. His homosexuality, once realised, came at a time when sexuality other than the ‘norm’ was not easily acceptable to society and certainly not his father. There is a story his father had him horsewhipped, which if it is the case, would have only added to the challenges and cruel experiences of his life. Theirs was a difficult relationship.

Francis Bacon did not complete school, quitting before he was to be expelled. He drifted off to London aged 16 not knowing where he wanted to be or what he wanted to do. Becoming a a renowned master artist was an idea that hadn’t yet entered his head or even emerged on his forseeable horizon.

A visit to Berlin in 1927 provided him with an experience of another place, but would not as yet generate any sort of interest in art, or life for that matter. Drifting on to France he sojourned in Chantilly for a few months, where he is said to have encountered the Nicolas Poussin work The Massacre of the Innocents c1630, one he would allude to later in his career.

After that at Paris he attended an exhibition of drawings by Picasso in the summer of 1927. Without any formal training or guidance this is the point that he began to make drawings and watercolours of himself.

At London in the late 20′s and early 30′s he set himself up as an interior decorator; a furniture and rug designer, the latter being made at Royal Wilton’s prestigious carpet factory. This was not an insignificant achievement for someone with no formal qualifications in any field.

Studio magazine wrote him up and Australian Post Cubist painter Roy de Maistre helped him find his feet and he began producing oils on canvas. Bacon mounted his first modest exhibition, with de Maistre participating too, of paintings and rugs. Although he was now moving up the ladder of society through the circle of people he was involved with, both personally and professionally, he found that it was desperately hard to earn enough money to live on.

Exempt from enlisting in the World War II effort because of asthma he took on the horrors of it all on the bombed out streets of London physically daily, as well as emotionally, internalizing what he saw. This was a point when he also became influenced by intellectual pursuits, especially the works of British born American poet and author T.S. Eliot.

His first major work Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944 was hung in a group exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery, New Bond Street in April 1945. This was only mere weeks before the end of the war in Europe, unnerving all who encountered what is a very disturbing triptych. It certainly made people sit up and notice him and it was a forerunner of things to come. In Bacon’s immediate oeuvre were images straight out of a horror story of what would seem to be a warped imagination, disembodied, disembowelled mangled manic figures, torturous for the viewer in the extreme.

At this point he seemingly linked what happened in slaughterhouses to animals and to the war experiences of humankind during the horrific years he had just lived through.

It was a combination of bleak city and bad news all at once, in a time of political and social transition.

He would revisit the subject again in 1962.

Following the war he made his way to the French Riviera and the gambling dens of the Côte d’Azur, where he was supposed to be busy producing a body of work for a show at London.

He did experiment with different techniques and also texture by painting on the reverse unprimed side of a canvas, an intractability he enjoyed so very much, because it only made it all the harder.

Torturing himself had now also entered the equation.

Pushed for time to complete enough works on his return to London in the late 40′s he produced a series of six ‘heads’ and focused on producing ‘disturbing details such as open mouths, teeth, ears and safety pins’.

His Head VI 1949 seems to be screaming out in protest, its purple cape representing that worn by the Pope, as well as his earliest variation on Spanish master Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1650.

This was another theme he would repeat with obsessive intensity throughout the following decade and intermittently during the 1960s and 70s.

One might suspect that it was perhaps a comment on the torturous experiences of his early life in Catholic Dublin, that is if we were to believe there was a narrative attached to his works.

His trips to South Africa where his mother had moved following his father’s death would add another layer of influence during the 50′s, which seemed to be a kinder period of his life. This was when he divided his time between Morocco and London and began moving in illustrious literary circles, gaining loyal patrons in Robert and Lisa Sainsbury.

He exhibited in 1954 at the Venice Biennale and had his first one man show in New York in 1953 and at Paris in 1957.

This is when his painting started undergoing a transformation and his colours became much more strident in both their range and hue, leaving the sombre backgrounds and ghostly forms far behind.

During the swinging sixties when revolutions in sexuality, popular culture, gender fashion and lifestyle were all happening he was living n a converted coach house in Reece Mews in South Kensington.

It was from there that he reworked his ‘three studies for a crucifixion’, which was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in May of 1962.

This was an exceedingly uplifting time for him in terms of virtuosity and he employed a great deal of bravura brushwork, producing compositions of great invention.

He gained and lost a lover and a muse during this period and when George Dyer, who had tried to frame his lover for possession of cannabis, died in 1973 his Triptych May – June of 1973 was one of grave simplicity.

This was a period were shape and expression was reflected in a new material culture that was richly visual.

During the 70′s and 80′s solo exhibitions and retrospectives of his work meant that his became a name well known around the world of art.

As he aged during his 70′s he also took on the challenge of ‘landscape’, during which nature’s daily events, such as a sandstorm, were given attention.

His pictorial language was reduced as he began searching for a simplicity it had not known previously, and his colours took on other nuances and were refined.

His health gradually declined and during a trip to Madrid in April 1992, one that he had been advised against he died, ironically in the presence of two nuns. His estate was left to John Edwards whom he had met during the mid-1970s.

Francis Bacon: Five Decades of Art
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
17th November 2012 – 24 February 2013

13.5.13

In search of the grotesque factor


What is grotesque in art? Hyperbolic, deformed, satirical or even incongruous are some of the words often associated with it. The Picasso Museum Málaga explores this aspect in El factor grotesco, an exhibition about the meanings and the evolution of this aesthetic category in the history of Western art.

More than 250 paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings and fragments of films from almost 80 different artists brought together to explore this extraordinary topic.


Pope, by Francis Bacon

For details and reviews, see El factor grotesco; for analysis and criticism, see A la búsqueda del factor grotesco.

8.5.13

Kissing the Rod


TO KISS THE ROD is an old English expression meaning to "submit to one's master." It is a phrase best remembered for its uses in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Richard the Second, yet it first appears in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (written in the 1580s and published around 1590).

Origin. In the old days, the master would have a staff (rod) and the servant had to bow to his master and kiss his staff, showing his submission to him.

Significantly, TO KISS THE ROD can additionally mean to "accept punishment submissively" (Oxford Dictionaries) and even "to submit to punishment or misfortune meekly and without murmuring" (E. Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1894).

Bacon: The End of the Line
Submissiveness to the master?

Charlotte Higgins, Sado-masochism and Stolen Shoe Polish: Bacon's Legacy Revisited, The Guardian, 22 November 2009.

Art historian John Richardson's revelations on the troubled artist he knew as a young man.

Francis Bacon's was a life lived to extravagant extremes. His drunken excesses in the Colony Room Club in Soho; his carnivalesque, ruinous generosity; the formative occasion on which, as a teenager, his father found him wearing his mother's underwear and beat the living daylights out of him – all this is almost as celebrated as his riotously tortured paintings.

But now the art historian John Richardson, whose multi-volume life of Picasso has been called the best artist's biography ever written, and who knew Bacon from the 1940s, has argued that the best of Bacon's art stemmed precisely from his sadomasochistic sexual relationships at their most intense, which also led directly to the death of at least one of his lovers.

It was that early beating by his father to which Bacon attributed his taste for masochism – desires that were played out in adulthood with his lover Peter Lacy.

Richardson describes Lacy's "most heinous assault": "In a state of alcoholic dementia, he hurled Bacon through a plate glass window. His face was so damaged that his right eye had to be sewn back into place. Bacon loved Lacy even more. For weeks he would not forgive Lucian Freud for remonstrating with his torturer. Mercifully, Lacy moved to Tangier."

Writing in the forthcoming issue of the New York Review of Books, Richardson calls Lacy "a dashing 30-year-old … He owned an infamous cottage in the Thames valley, where Francis would spend much of his time – often, according to him, in bondage".

Richardson adds: "Unfortunately, drink released a fiendish, sadistic streak in Lacy that bordered on the psychopathic. Besides taking his rage out on Bacon, he took it out on his canvases. To his credit, however, he inspired some of his lover's most memorable works, among them, the Man in Blue paintings: a menacing, dark-suited Lacy set off against vertical draperies."

The best-known of Bacon's lovers is George Dyer – partly because Bacon immortalised in paintings Dyer's 1971 suicide in a hotel bedroom lavatory, on the eve of the artist's retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris.

Richardson describes the directness of the relationship between Bacon's desires and his artistic output. "Bacon would goad George into a state of psychic meltdown and then, in the early hours of the morning – his favourite time to work – he would exorcise his guilt and rage and remorse in images of Dyer aimed, as he said, at the nervous system." Richardson argues that these are among his best works.

Richardson describes the evening he spent in New York with the pair in 1968. After a lunch during which Bacon called Jackson Pollock an "old lace-maker" they went out drinking. Dyer left, after an argument, and in the early hours Richardson received a call from Bacon who had found his lover passed out on the floor of their room in the Algonquin hotel, "unconscious from having washed down a handful of his sleeping pills with a bottle of scotch".

According to Richardson: "The goading worsened, the imagery intensified," and finally, after another unsuccessful suicide attempt in Greece, Dyer killed himself in Paris.

Richardson argues that Bacon's art went rapidly downhill when, after Dyer's death, he entered a relationship with John Edwards, which was "seemingly free of sadomasochistic overtones. This may explain why Bacon's work lost its sting and failed to thrill. Paintings inspired by Edwards, as well as a Formula 1 driver and a famous cricketer the artist fancied (fetishism survives in the batting pads), reveal that in old age Bacon managed to banish his demons and move on to beefcake. His headless hunks of erectile tissue buffed to perfection have an angst-free, soft-porn glow".

Richardson is an unusually stern critic of Bacon – who was the subject of a Tate retrospective last year and is revered by such artists as Damien Hirst. The problem, argues Richardson, is that Bacon simply could not draw. "Painting after painting would be marred by his inability to articulate a figure or its space." The critic David Sylvester – who helped cement Bacon's reputation – let him off too lightly for this "fatal flaw", he argues. "His celebrated variants on Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X are either magnificent flukes or near-total disasters. In the earliest of this 10-year series, Bacon famously portrays the pope screaming. He's good at screams but hopeless at hands, so he amputates, conceals, or otherwise fudges them."

Richardson describes his first visit to Bacon's studio in the late 1940s. "Bacon struck me as being exhilaratingly funny … Everything about his vast, vaulted studio was over the top: martinis served in huge Waterford tumblers; a paint-stained garter belt kicked under a sofa … The ramshackle theatricality that permeated the studio also permeated the three iconic mastershockers – scrotum-bellied humanoids screaming out at us from the base of a crucifixion – that were about to make the artist famous."

The sight of Bacon's blind old nanny, Jessie Lightfoot, knitting in a corner "came as a surprise". She slept on the kitchen table, and "provided cover for Francis's shoplifting sprees (groceries, cosmetics, and Kiwi shoe polish for his hair)". She also helped provide an unusual source of income for Bacon: when the artist held illicit roulette parties, she would extort huge tips from visitors desperate to go to the loo. According to Richardson: "I remember Francis echoing his nanny: 'They should bring back hanging for buggery.' He was certainly not the only gay Englishman for whom guilt was intrinsic to sex."

Sadomasochism
John Richardson claims it was the key to Francis Bacon's finest work.

Charlotte Higgins, "Demons and Beefcake: The Other Side of Francis Bacon," The Guardian, 22 November 2009

The territories of Francis Bacon's soul have been explored widely; they have been the subject of a film, books and endless speculation. But the senior art historian John Richardson – who, at 85, is working on the last volume of his acclaimed biography of Picasso, and who knew Bacon from his 20s – has now laid down his views and recollections of Bacon, amounting to a reappraisal of his life and work.

Writing in the forthcoming issue of the New York Review of Books, Richardson argues that Bacon's sado-masochistic relationships lay at the heart of his best work, but with terrible consequences for his lover George Dyer, whose fragile mental state Richardson attributes to Bacon's endless "goading".

Having provoked Dyer into "a state of psychic meltdown" he "would exorcise his guilt and rage and remorse in images of Dyer aimed, as he said, at the nervous system". This "goading" resulted in Dyer's suicide, writes Richardson.

An earlier relationship, with Peter Lacy, was violent to the extent that "he hurled Bacon through a plate glass window. His face was so damaged that his right eye had to be sewn back into place".

Bacon's art went rapidly downhill when sado-masochism ceased to be a part of his life, argues Richardson, who describes the "angst-free, soft-porn glow" of his later work.

Richardson, who has hitherto held back from revealing his full memories of Bacon since the artist's death in 1992, also pours scorn on critics, such as the late David Sylvester, who attempted to defend the self-taught Bacon's "inability to draw". He calls the celebrated Screaming Popes series "either magnificent flukes or near-total disasters" and refers to Bacon's failure to convey "subjects that call for graphic skill, subjects, for instance, that include hands". Richardson also refers to Bacon's early adventures as a rent boy; his shoplifting, using his elderly nanny as an accomplice; and the vividly bohemian life around him, including a three-day party in 1950, whose guests "included members of parliament and fellows of All Souls, as well as 'rough trade', slutty debutantes, cross-dressers, and the notoriously evil Kray brothers".

The reversal of fortune

Nicholas Chare, After Francis Bacon: Synaesthesia and Sex in Paint, Wey Court East, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012. Like an analyst listening to a patient, this study attends not just to what is said in David Sylvester's interviews with Francis Bacon, but also crucially to what is left unspoken, to revealing breaks and caesuras. Through interpreting these silences, "After Francis Bacon" breaks with stereotypical ideas about the artist's work and provides new readings and avenues of research. "After Francis Bacon" is the first book to give extended consideration to the way the reception of Bacon's art, including Gilles Deleuze's influential text on the artist, has been shaped by the Sylvester interviews - and to move beyond the limiting effects of the interviews, providing fresh interpretations. Nicholas Chare draws upon recent developments in psychoanalysis and forensic psychology to present innovative readings of Bacon's work, primarily based on the themes of sadomasochism and multi-sensory perception. Through bringing Bacon's paintings into dialogue with Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and the film "Alien", he also provides original insights into the ethical relevance the artist's works have for today. This study addresses the complexities of the artist's practice - particularly in relation to sexuality and synaesthesia - and additionally forms a crucial intervention within current debates about creative writing in art history:
"Art historical writing never merely describes art. It also shapes its reader's perception of it. Art's histories, its various texts and contexts, frame the ways in which works of art are understood. This framing is, in part, accomplished through choices of words and styles of writing. It is this aspect of the practice of art history, the composition of the description and explanation of artworks, which has increasingly, self-consciously, explained by historians [recently]" (p. 1).

Painter with a Double-Edged Sword

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." – Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 1605

4.3.13

Bacon in Australia


Francis Bacon, Triptych, 1970
Oil on canvas, each 198 × 147.5 cm.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond, European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970, Australian National Gallery, 1992, p.402: "The features of the man, dapperly dressed in the left canvas, and naked in the right canvas, are recognisably those of George Dyer. Bacon met Dyer in 1964 and he became Bacon’s close friend and primary model for over a decade, his presence persisting in Bacon’s work well beyond his death in Paris in October 1971. Bacon preferred to work from memory and photographs. As a point of departure he often used the serial photographs which Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) made in the 1880s of humans and animals in motion and published in the enormous compendium Animal Locomotion in 1887. The image in the central panel of the Canberra painting was adopted from Muybridge’s photographs of wrestlers. Bacon had used this image on a number of previous occasions, at first in Two figures 1953 (private collection, London) and, contemporaneously with the Canberra painting, in the central panel of Triptych — studies from the human body 1970 (collection Jacques Hachuel, Paris). However, Muybridge’s photographs may also have been the source of another feature that is unique to the Canberra Triptych – the suspended platforms that support the figure in the left and in the right panels. While the overlapping geometric forms of the platforms may recall Bacon’s own early designs for modernist furniture, the complex system of lines denoting ropes or wires from which these platforms are suspended seem to be derived from Muybridge’s serial photographs of a woman getting into and out of a hammock – also from Animal Locomotion."

3.3.13

Tate Biographic Data


Francis Bacon 1909-1992

Sam Walsh, Pin Up 1963, 1963
Liverpool Museums, United Kingdom

Born to an English family in Dublin on 28 October 1909. Francis Bacon spent his childhood at Cannycourt, County Kildare. He was blighted by asthma from which he suffered throughout his life. Bacon repeatedly ran away from his school in Cheltenham (1924-6). After his authoritarian father, repelled by his burgeoning homosexuality, threw him out of the family home for wearing his mother’s clothes, Bacon arrived in London in 1926 with little schooling but with a weekly allowance of £3 from his mother.

In 1927 Bacon travelled to Berlin (frequenting the city’s homosexual night-clubs) and Paris. He was impressed by Picasso’s 1927 exhibition (Galerie Paul Rosenberg). Returning to London in the following year, he established himself at Queensbury Mews West, South Kensington. He worked as a furniture and interior designer in the modernist style of Eileen Gray and exhibited his designs there in 1929. These were featured in the Studio before he shared a second studio show with the painters Jean Shepeard and Roy de Maistre (November 1930). An early patron was the businessman, Eric Hall, who would became Bacon’s lover and supporter between 1934 and 1950. As well as designing, Bacon also painted with De Maistre, who was as an important influence and practical guide on matters of technique. The results showed the impact of Jean Lurçat and Picasso. Bacon's Crucifixion shown at the Mayor Gallery in 1933 was juxtaposed with a Picasso in Herbert Read’s Art Now and bought by the collector Sir Michael Sadler. In the following year, the painter organised his first solo exhibition in the basement of Graham Sunderland's house, renamed "Transition Gallery" for the purpose, but it was not well received and he responded by destroying the paintings. Bacon's works were rejected by Read for the International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936, but Bacon and de Maistre helped Hall to organize Young British Painters (Agnew and Sons, January 1937).

With the coming of war in 1939, Bacon was exempt from military service and released by the ARP on account of his asthma. He spent 1941 painting in Hampshire, before returning to London where he met Lucian Freud and was close to Sutherland. From these years emerged the works which he later considered as the beginning of his career, pre-eminently the partial bodies of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944, which was first shown at the Lefevre Gallery (April 1945) to unease and acclaim alike. Bacon became central to an artistic milieu in post-war Soho, which included Lucian Freud, John Deakin, Henrietta Moraes, Isabel Rawsthorne and others. On Sutherland’s recommendation Erica Brausen secured the painter’s contract with the Hanover Gallery and sold Painting 1946 to the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1948. Bacon gambled away the results at Monte Carlo and, as homosexuality remained illegal, his lifestyle in London and France was tinged with the illicit.

The early 1950s saw a period of success and rootlessness. Bacon’s first post-war solo exhibition included the first of many works inspired by Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1650 (Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome) and showed his use of characteristic enclosing frameworks (Hanover Gallery, December 1951 – February 1952); it was followed by his New York debut (Durlacher Gallery, October 1953). The paintings of Popes, which established his reputation, alternated with those of contemporary figures in suits who were similarly entrapped; however, following a trip to Egypt and South Africa (1950) a lighter tonality emerged in paintings of sphinxes and of animals. During this period, Peter Lacey became Bacon’s lover and inspired homoerotic images of wrestlers derived from Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs in Animal Locomotion (Philadelphia 1887), Animals in Motion (London 1899) and The Human Figure in Motion (London 1901); the photographs became a habitual source, just as the theme of sexual encounter persisted. In Italy in 1954, Bacon avoided seeing Velázquez’s Pope Innocent X in Rome and his own paintings at the Venice Biennale, where he shared the British pavilion with Ben Nicholson and Freud. Two years later, he visited Lacey in Tangiers, where he subsequently returned regularly until Lacey’s death in 1962.

The exhibition of paintings after Van Gogh (Hanover Gallery, 1957) marked the sudden departure from the preceding monochromatic works towards heightened colour. Despite their success, in the following year the painter transferred dealer to Marlborough Fine Art; they paid off his growing gambling debts, mounted larger exhibitions and ensured that he destroyed fewer canvases. In 1961, Bacon settled in Reece Mews, South Kensington, where he remained for the rest of his life, and in the following year the Tate Gallery organised a major touring retrospective which saw the resumption of his use of the triptych which would become his characteristic format. At that time he recorded the first of the interviews with the critic David Sylvester which would constitute the canonical text on his own work.

Francis Bacon, photographed by Irving Penn, 1962 (Vanity Fair).

In 1963-4, Bacon’s international reputation was confirmed with his retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1963) and by the publication of Ronald Alley’s catalogue raisonée. He refused the Carnegie Institute Award (1967) and donated the Rubens Prize towards the restorations following the flood of Florence. On the eve of Bacon’s large retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris (1971), his long-time lover George Dyer committed suicide and this event left haunting echoes in ensuing paintings. In 1974, John Edwards became the painter’s companion and model.

In the 1970s Bacon travelled regularly to New York and Paris, where he bought a pied-à-terre, and publications helped to establish the popular image of his work as a reflection of the anxiety of the modern condition. International exhibitions became more wide-ranging: Marseilles (1976), Mexico and Caracas (1977), Madrid and Barcelona (1978), Tokyo (1983). They reinforced the perception of Bacon as the greatest British painter since J.M.W. Turner. His works from this period were dominated by the triptych, but the figures grew calmer and were set against flat expanses of colour. In isolated images without a human presence, an animal power was retained in segments of dune and waste land. The exhibitions culminated in a second Tate retrospective (1985, travelling to Stuttgart and Berlin), and shows in Moscow (1988) and Washington (1989). On a visit to Madrid in 1992, Bacon was hospitalised with pneumonia exacerbated by asthma and died on 28 April.


Resources

• "The 1930 Look in British Decoration," Studio, vol.100, August 1930, pp. 140-1

• Ronald Alley and John Rothenstein, Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné and Documentation, London, 1964

• John Russell, Francis Bacon, London, Paris and Berlin 1971

• David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, London 1975

• Dawn Ades and Andrew Forge, Francis Bacon, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1985

• Matthew Gale, Artist Biography: Francis Bacon, Tate, London, December 1997.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...