FRANCIS BACON

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n Francis Bacon

1. INTRODUCTION | Read this short presentation about Francis Bacon and summarize the main facts about his life and works.

a. When and where he was born .......................................................................................

b. In which period he worked .......................................................................................

c. How he portrayed his subjects .......................................................................................

d. His production .......................................................................................

- in the 1940s .......................................................................................

- in the early 1950s .......................................................................................

- from mid to late 1950s .......................................................................................

- from mid 1960s to early 1970s .......................................................................................

- in the 1980s .......................................................................................

e. How his works were received by the public ..........................................................................

f. His reputation after his death .......................................................................................

Francis Bacon (Dublin 1909 – Madrid 1992) produced some of the most iconic images of

wounded and traumatized humanity in post-war art. Borrowing inspiration from Surrealism, film, photography, and the Old Masters, he forged a distinctive style that made him one of the most widely recognized exponents of figurative art in the 1940s and 1950s. Bacon concentrated his energies on portraiture, often depicting friends or habitués of the bars and clubs of London’s Soho neighborhood. But his subjects were always violently distorted, presented not as sociable and charismatic types but as isolated souls imprisoned and tormented by existential dilemmas.

He often said in interviews that he saw images “in series”, and his artistic output typically focused on a single subject or format for sustained periods. His output consisted of sequences or variations on a single motif; beginning with the 1940s male heads isolated in rooms, the early 1950s screaming popes, and mid-to late 1950s lone figures suspended in geometric structures. From the mid-1960s to early 1970s, Bacon mainly produced strikingly compassionate portraits of friends, either as single or triptych panels. In the 1980s, his art became more personal, inward looking and preoccupied with themes and motifs of death.

During his lifetime, Bacon was equally reviled and acclaimed. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher described him as “that man who paints those dreadful pictures”, but his reputation was elevated further after his death and he was the subject of two retrospective exhibitions at London’s Tate Gallery, which celebrated him as one of the world’s most important painters.

Francis Bacon in his study in the early 1960s.

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2. VOCABULARY | Look at the Study for a Portrait that Bacon painted in 1952, read the comment about it and match the words underlined in the text with their Italian equivalents.

1. tie a. bastone (di una tenda)

2. to screen (screened) b. liscio/a

3. rail c. imbragatura

4. to blur (blurred) d. un fotogramma

5. erasure e. cravatta

6. harness f. un primo piano

7. raw and unprimed (canvas) g. appannare, sfocare

8. smooth h. schermare, riparare

9. a still i. (tela) grezza e non preparata

10. a close-up j. cancellazione/i

3. SPEAKING | Compare the two images, the Study of a Portrait by Bacon and the still of the nurse from The Battleship Potemkin, and answer these questions.

1. What are the similarities between the two images?

This painting shows the head and shoulders of an unidentified male figure wearing glasses, a white shirt, a suit jacket and a

tie. The man appears to be screaming directly at a viewer, his mouth wide open and his teeth exposed. He is screened from the darkness behind him by a blue curtain hung from a pink rail at eye-level, and his head is blurred by repeated erasure and repainting. Lines of white, red and blue paint are arranged like an angular harness on the figure, extending the lines of the suit and creating a frame over its wearer. From 1947 until the end of his career Francis Bacon painted directly onto the raw and unprimed side of the canvas (rather than using the smooth surface provided by primed canvas), and in this work he emphasized the texture further, especially around the figure’s eyes and mouth, by rubbing sand into the paint.

One specific image can be suggested as a potential source for the figure in Study for a Portrait. He drew inspiration from a still from an injured woman in the Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein. In his studio, he kept a photographic still of the scene which showed a close-up of the nurse’s head screaming in panic and terror and with broken pince-nez spectacles hanging from her blood-stained face. He referred to the image throughout his career, using it as a source of inspiration.

Francis Bacon, Study for a Portrait, 1952 - Oil paint and sand on canvas - Tate Gallery - London

Still from Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent film The Battleship Potemkin.

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2. And what are the differences?3. What is Bacon trying to communicate, in your opinion?

4. Now read an excerpt from Bacon’s last interview which he gave in 1991. It will help you to understand what he wanted to express with his distorted portraits.

5. ACTIVITY | Look at the “Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X” by Bacon, read the comment and the excerpt from an interview with him, and say if the statements below are true or false.

Interviewer: What is your vision of the world?

Francis Bacon: Since the beginning of time, we have had countless examples of human violence even in our very civilized century. We have even created bombs capable of blowing up the planet a thousand times over. An artist instinctively takes all this into account. He can’t do otherwise. I am a painter of the 20th century: during my childhood I lived through the revolutionary Irish movement, Sinn Fein, and the wars, Hiroshima, Hitler, the death camps, and daily violence that I’ve experienced all my life. And after all that they want me to paint bunches of pink flowers ... But that’s not my thing. The only things that interest me are people, their folly, their ways, their anguish, this unbelievable, purely accidental intelligence which has shattered the planet, and which maybe, one day, will destroy it.

Although the figure in this picture derives from a 1650 portrait of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velazquez, Bacon avoided viewing the original painting, preferring to work from reproductions. Here he employs a cage-like frame that surrounds

Francis Bacon, Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953 - Des Moines Art Center, Iowa

Velázquez’s Portrait of Innocent X, 1650. Galleria Doria Pamphilj - Rome

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1. Bacon went to Rome to see the original painting by Velasquez. T F2. Bacon was a very religious man and wanted to pay homage to the Pope. T F3. Bacon greatly admired Velasquez and his use of colour. T F4. In Bacon’s Study the Pope is surrounded by a cage-like frame. T F5. The vertical brushing is like a curtain protecting a precious object. T F6. At the same time, the vertical strokes remind the viewer of the bars of a jail. T F7. Bacon wanted to represent the Pope as a tragic hero. T F

6. ACTIVITY | Compare the Pope Innocent X by Bacon and by Velasquez, and work with a partner to answer these questions.

1. What are the similarities between the two paintings?2. And what are the differences?3. What is Bacon trying to communicate with the screaming and distorted image of

the Pope?

the pope, but also introduces vertical brushing across the surface of the painting, an element he described as a curtain, relating the figure to a precious object requiring a protected space. However, the linear strokes are destructive to the image, and seem more like the bars of a jail cell. The lines almost seem to vibrate, and complementary shades of purple and yellow add to the tension of the composition.

INTERVIEW I: You paint pictures which are connected with religion, for instance, the Popes. Do you know why you constantly paint pictures which touch on religion?FB: In the Popes it doesn’t come from anything to do with religion; it comes from an obsession with Velasquez’s Pope Innocent X.

I: But why was it you chose the Pope?FB: Because I think it is one of the greatest portraits that have ever been.

I: But aren’t there other equally great portraits by Velasquez which you might have become obsessed by? Are you sure there’s nothing special for you in the fact of its being a Pope?FB: I think it’s the magnificent colour of it.

I: But you’ve also done two or three paintings of a modern Pope, Pius XII, based on photographs, as if the interest in the Velasquez had become transferred on to the Pope himself as a sort of heroic figure.FB: It is true, of course; the Pope is unique. He’s put in a unique position by being the Pope, and therefore, like in certain great tragedies, he’s as though raised on to a dais1 on which the grandeur of this image can be displayed to the world.

1 dais = palco, predella