Francis Bacon
In the Mind of Great Artists
We could make this publication thanks to small donations. How is 3 minutos de arte supported?
“My painting is not violent; it is life that is violent.”
Francis Bacon
When we think of Francis Bacon’s work, we think of tormented characters, deformed by pain, by existential anguish.
Although he was not English (he was born in Ireland), Bacon is included in the School of London: the artists who worked in London after World War II. They were figurative painters, who transmitted the desperation of the human being after having witnessed the horror of what the human being is capable of. This group of artists —although they had very different styles— had something in common: they showed the fragile, suffering, anguished human being. An anguish that is marked on the faces and surfaces of things and deforms them.
Francis Bacon’s work strikes, impresses, hurts. That is why it is usually labeled as “violent.” We can appreciate his point of view as regards violence in the last interview he had with the photographer Francis Giacobetti, in 1992, a few months before Bacon died.
” My painting is not violent; it is life that is violent. I have endured physical violence, I have even had my teeth broken. Sexuality, human emotion, everyday life, personal humiliation (you only have to watch television) violence is part of human nature. Even within the most beautiful landscape, in trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is part of life.
(…) In between we fight to protect ourselves, to earn money; we are humiliated daily by stupid idiots for even more stupid reasons. Amidst it all we love or we don’t love. It’s all the same anyway; it passes the time.
My painting is a representation of life, my own life above all, which has been very difficult. So perhaps my painting is very violent, but this is natural to me. I have been lucky enough to be able to live on my obsession. This is my only success. I have no moral lesson to preach, nor any advice to give. Nietzsche said, ‘Everything is so absurd that we might as well be extraordinary.’ I am content with just being ordinary.”
Image: Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962)
Recommended links:
Timeline: Moments of Francis Bacon.
Timeline: Moments of Lucian Freud.
Timeline: Moments of David Hockney.
A Bigger Splash (1967), David Hockney.
David Hockney, 82 Portraits and 1 Still Life.
You can also find more material using the search engine.
0 Comments