FRANCIS BACON OR THE MEASURE OF EXCESS by ACC Art Books

YVES PEYRÃ&#x2030;

FRANCIS BACON OR THE MEASURE OF EXCESS

ACC ART BOOKS

YVES PEYRÃ&#x2030;

FRANCIS BACON OR THE MEASURE OF EXCESS

ACC ART BOOKS

THOUGHTS ON A DESTINY

There is no one quite like Francis Bacon in contemporary art history. He is virtually unique as a person, totally unique as an artist. He is the quintessential embodiment of difference, uncompromising of attitude, incomparable of posture. To truly appreciate his work of the mid-twentieth century, we are compelled to plumb the depths of human existence. He made the ordinary elements in his paintings seem both disconcerting and beguiling; he seemed driven by an irrepressible natural instinct, but the roots of his behaviour were completely opaque to everyone else. He was determinedly figurative in a world seduced by abstraction. It was his pride and glory. His compositions display a violence that the strange softness in which they are enveloped can only partially attenuate. He moved progressively forward. Rather strangely, despite all the reservations and criticisms (some of them expressed by certain of his fellows from that golden age of Soho), he carved out his place, he rose to pre-eminence. His personal charm is part of it, as is the radicalism of his painterly choices. From the start he had influential supporters; he was championed by Roy de Maistre and Graham Sutherland, his mentors, and Lucian Freud, his favoured fellow traveller, among the artists (they rank with him among the most eminent figures in British art, even though he very quickly surpassed them, as no one else in Britain was his equal), and his dealer, the ever loyal Erica Brausen, owner of the Hanover Gallery, who defended him through thick and thin, ignoring the protests of her financial backers; driven by her passion, she displayed a rare prescience as well as an absolute devotion and unstinting faith. The crowning moment of that great period between 1946 and 1962 (kickstarted by Alfred Barrâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s acquisition in 1948 of the stunning Painting (1946) for MoMA in New York, the first purchase by a museum) followed soon after with the definitive exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1962 (it was at the private viewing that Bacon learned of the tragic death of his lover Peter Lacy in Tangier). Baconâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reputation as a painter of historical

THOUGHTS ON A DESTINY

importance was sealed here in one of the world’s most prestigious galleries (variants of the exhibition were put on in Mannheim, Turin, Zürich and Amsterdam, transmitting his fame even more widely). His contract with the Marlborough Gallery in 1958 clearly did him a great favour by bringing a more searching spotlight to bear. This was just the start of what would prove to be an unstoppable upward trajectory of recognition.

as the exhibitions in 1984 and 1987 at the Galerie Lelong, the regular showings at the Marlborough and the second retrospective at the Tate in 1985 (noted for the rigour of its curation and the exceptional quality of its catalogue), not to mention the accolade of Japan in 1983 (Tokyo, Kyoto, the two imperial cities, and Nagoya) and the wonderful homage paid by Moscow in 1988 at the New Tretyakov Gallery. It is highly significant that this gallery, which, though it honoured the sublime artists of the Russian avant garde (active between 1907 and 1932), disproportionately favoured the platitudes of social realism, should, just two years after the fall of communism, at the height of perestroika, celebrate an artist who embodied everything that ideology sets out to reject. This demonstrates the impact of Bacon on his time; in fact, the very absurdity of his pre-eminence was proof of it. It was a categorical rebuttal to any remaining doubters. At this time Bacon was indeed the greatest living artist.

This is all quite surprising given that his work elicited quite negative reactions. However, the great majority of comments were favourable ones. The following year, 1963, the Guggenheim confirmed his status with a major exhibition (which toured to two cities with a particular artistic sensibility, Chicago and Houston). A year later, the first catalogue raisonné of his work appeared. From that point onwards, Bacon was quite rightly ranked among the greatest artists, lauded in his own country, Britain, as well as the United States, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Holland. He loved France and hoped to conquer that too. Bacon’s work finally made its mark there between 1971 and 1977. It wasn’t that he was hitherto unknown in France – far from it, he had been launched there as early as 1966 via an exhibition at the Galerie Maeght, the catalogue for which had a preface by Michel Leiris, whom he had met the previous year. The Bacon effect was growing steadily and probably began to fully take hold in the wake of his exhibition at the Tate. In 1971 there was a superb retrospective mounted at the Grand Palais, which was memorable not just because of how it caught the imagination of the public but also because of a tragedy (the suicide, in their hotel in Paris, of his partner George Dyer on the eve of the opening; Bacon having to relive the dramatic events that had overshadowed his exhibition at the Tate nine years earlier). The catalogue was once again introduced by Michel Leiris. Bacon’s grandeur was evident from that day, even if not yet fully fleshed out. In 1977, there was an exhibition of recent works at the Galerie Claude Bernard, again with a preface by Michel Leiris (the third in eleven years). The exhibition displayed his new artistic maturity, but it was also quite an event in itself (Rue des Beaux-Arts was closed to traffic on the day of the preview to allow the public to reach the gallery safely). It was the start of Bacon’s rise to fame among a wider audience. In 1971 and 1977 I was present at both these major events, before I knew Francis Bacon personally. I am not overstating their importance just because I was there: they were destined to become milestones both in the history of modern art and in society as a whole. Paris honoured Bacon and, after London and New York, Berlin and Munich, Chicago and Houston, Zürich and Amsterdam, and at the same time as Marseille (where an exhibition was put on by the Musée Cantini in 1976), helped to establish him as the most striking painter of his time. The adulation he received was unprecedented in the world of art; there was a level of frenzy that you normally find only at certain sporting events, rock concerts or major film screenings. Bacon was so important as an artist that he acquired a mythical status. He replaced the recently deceased (1973) Picasso in the collective unconscious as the epitome of glorious creativity. Further major events helped to consolidate this image, such

But what does Francis Bacon represent exactly? An artist in rupture. There is much debate about the violence that his works express (whatever the intentions and thoughts of the artist himself might have been). They are works of catharsis, or exorcism. This is all too true. The theatre of his paintings harks back to ancient tragedy. The period from 1950 to 1980 (reaching its zenith around 1970) was dominated by a type of art that sought to eschew figuration as much as possible and pursue a radical form of abstraction. Some may well have veered away from this line (such as Giacometti, for example, or Balthus, and also the practitioners of pop art and the new realism), but none broke with the dominant model with the commitment that is evident in Bacon’s paintings. His form of figuration, even as it assaults factual reality, preserves its mystery; it has little to do with narrative, still less with anecdote or illustration; it creates excess in the very ellipse of its emergence. However well defined his paintings are, they have pure fire at their centre. Chance and accident relayed the vertigo of their construction and the violent confession of life and death. Bacon was decisive, and his own life, which was largely the crucible of his work, was part of this. In many respects, it was a scandalous one, dominated by alcohol and homosexuality. The forbidden returned with a vengeance and was sanctified as trial, even martyrdom. Bacon was free. Certain songs (‘Kiss Me Hardy’ by Serge Gainsbourg, for one) make a nod towards this internal theatre of his. This provided the basis for no end of misunderstandings. Bacon is untouchable, and yet a considerable number of people believe they can see a little of their own profound truth in what he reveals. A few years later, after 1980, I witnessed one of these strange acts of devotion that his work inspired. As we were walking down Boulevard Saint-Germain, chatting, we were interrupted by a man who threw his arms around Bacon and thanked him. This unexpected but poignant scene was not unique, he told me; it happened to him every now and then. He was surprised, embarrassed, moved and, contradictorily, somewhat furious. In truth, he received an enormous amount of gratitude, from all quarters, and yet at the same

Portrait of Michel Leiris 1976

Figure Writing Reflected in Mirror 1976

Portrait of Michel Leiris 1976

Figure Writing Reflected in Mirror 1976

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THE SURPRISE THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

Bacon is no longer at work, he is part of History. This enforced distance has merely sharpened our connection. We can contemplate his painting through its various periods, even the small sidesteps, and focus on every detail. That is not to say, however, that this deeper knowledge, which includes even the minor works, leads us to change our approach very much. Our fascination with the familiar paintings remains undimmed, even if, now and then, we turn up some wonder that we had not spotted when Bacon was active. The time for passage was the time for choice and drawing a veil; willingly or unwillingly it left behind works in progress that are splendours equal to those that the artist preferred, as did all those who approached his work at the time when he was still painting. Our gaze can now assess things better, understand the contexts more fully; it sees what needs to be discarded or conversely reintegrated. If we allow ourselves to invest the work in its entirety with strength and attention, there are no really difficult choices to make. The excessive, and nothing but, is what counts. Bacon shook up the traditions of painting, he modified the practices of art with the sole aim of being exact, of not betraying that sensation that gnawed inside his head; he thus delivered the mysterious trace of the path he was opening up. He played with the real and the unreal, he avoided flat narration and the mediocrity of illustration, he won the prize for dĂŠcor by offloading abstraction for its own sake. Bacon shattered appearances, he made the most contradictory elements collide in an enclosed space. We watch the work progress and all we retain from it is that which plays on our nerves and dazzles our eyes, the paintings that have already been considered and approved, a few rare ones found by chance. All that remain crack like lightning. Bacon is, through his significant body of work (at the lowest estimate a good hundred or so obvious paintings, though this figure may be as high as three hundred, which is a better estimate), an artist who not only matters in his own time but is a major figure in the history of painting during

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the last millennium. In the period following the end of his active life, his is the work everyone continues to turn back to and push further, time after time. He grows ever greater. He is a little more resplendent every day.

effect or the complexity of the references? The expression of the face or the fullness of the gesture? The variation on a theme or the dogged recurrence of a particular element? The excess of violence or the recognition of tenderness? Bacon is there, ready to strike. Each of his paintings is a punch to the gut. Sometimes the shadow of metaphysics, sometimes the memory of a mythology, in everything he proposes Bacon radiates an unknown zone which is a perturbation of the expected. He makes absence scintillate and saturates presence. His paintings are hopes and homages. He remembers and tries to capture something that is fleeting. He invalidates any notion of anecdote, he confines himself to the vibration of the terrible. From large triptychs of scenes we come to small triptychs of heads, to large-format but self-sufficient paintings which are full-length portraits, apparitions or suggestions of dreams. We also see the rare small formats, which are exclusively heads exacerbating the frenzy of living. Nothing is repeated, everything moves on. A repertoire of possibilities comes into play; we hear the rumour that surrounds the picture and drags it towards the episode that he fashions. He gives names to the mystery but avoids being too precise. His painting is astonishingly clear, it has crossed the dark rooms that it assumes: traces of blood and fragments of flesh co-exist with the softness of the décors. The most consistent of pretexts is the preliminary recourse to photographs of all types or archives more generally. Not the least of Bacon’s modernities was his enthusiasm for photography (accessed directly or via reproductions in books), even though he accorded it a minor status. The intoxication of achieving an a priori confirmation of his inner impulse was a matter of primary importance to him. The material is diverted and modified. It is integrated into a context that it seems (quite strangely) unable to repel. Bacon accomplished a leap into the improbable of his history, as his painting did in even more radical fashion. The space that received it was not neutral, it trembled, and in it the figure became lost, along with all its attributes.

Perhaps in hindsight Bacon’s most salient feature was the astonishing mastery (without equal) he demonstrated throughout his whole work, though he had never been trained, or received the slightest teaching. Not only is his work perfect, it avoids all the traps and employs all possible forms of material transgression (such as the use of glass panes to smooth out the deposit of paint on the canvas). He was an artist who explored, constantly discovering unknown paths, varying his effects, drawn to every possibility by some form of magnetism, knowing how to feel with his hand and his agile mind the unlikeliness of truth. Bacon was not in a position to use a given means or follow a given process. Not having served an apprenticeship in a studio or received an education at an art school, he felt constrained to reinvent the ways of painting, to plumb the void in order to extract them. Bacon came to art under his own steam, he progressed exclusively by his own merits, he had to master formal method and grammar. This constant re-founding of the act of painting allowed him to deepen his art like no other. The proof of this was in the doing (he affirmed it often enough) but even more so in giving himself the means to do so. Bacon’s role in the history of art is that of some extremely learned savage, and he plotted his own course quite free of constraint. He adopted what was in many respects a surprising position. He was as drawn to the past and admired its finest works as much as he despised contemporary art. Nevertheless, he was not a reactionary who would make a painting in the manner of what had gone before. He invented a fiercely personal style of his own. He even destroyed the very possibility of convention. He was a revolutionary who sought the ways of the absolute, undermining all prescriptions, wishing to rely only on the unexpected processes that he himself brought into being. This anarchism of principle was his primary vector. Nor did he accept the conventions of modern life; he wanted to be an outsider. Bacon was not a schemer, still less a follower, he was unique. He was first and foremost a maker inspired by images (as expressed in his relentless work ethic). With hindsight, we are confounded by his courage and his boldness. He gave himself, to his detriment when necessary, the opportunity to be totally dissonant, a true inventor of the new who, in return, illuminated in an unforeseen and unforeseeable way, the century in which he lived and created. Bacon was more than an extraordinary character, a bright star, he was the patient creator of his own model. Today, more than ever, he is a landmark figure in the history of art. It is a pleasure to see the multiplicity of his production, either through his images or in their reality as works. It is not clear what counts the most. The science of the colourist or the presence of the figures? The construction of the painting or the subtleness of the décor? The perturbed realism or the embodied dream? The immediacy of the

The image: that was what attracted Bacon more than anything. The image: in other words the double hesitating between representation and evanescence. It is not for nothing that he strove to blur the trace of features on the faces, while retaining an at least metaphorical resemblance. He wanted to hold more closely both his uncompromising attitude to anecdote and the palpitation of flesh. He represented in the space of his painting the irreducibility of the figure who is both anonymous and yet perfectly individualised. He recited the dream and the memory of mythology and was given fresh impetus by the blaze of accident that throws experience off course. What appeared was the thing that was least expected. Trance or dance, torture or languor, movement or immobility? What was suggested was the magic solution that breaks realism, to which it is not appropriate to give oneself up explicitly, its sole virtue residing in being traversed and in colouring appearance (whether this is taken from everyday life or from myth). Bacon was constantly both distancing himself from and getting closer to the tension that underpins painting, that direct touch that takes hold

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315 p. 59 Painting 1946 1946 Oil and pastel on canvas, 198 × 132 cm (78 × 52 in) The Museum of Modern Art, New York 46.03

p. 73 Head I 1948 Oil and tempera on hardboard, 103 × 75 cm (40½ × 29½ in) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 48.01

LIST OF WORKS

The figure after each listing refers to the catalogue raisonné: Martin Harrison and Rebecca Daniels, Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, 5 vols, The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016. For works on paper and drawings, the figure refers to the Tate inventory number.

p. 75 Head VI 1949 Oil on canvas, 91.4 × 76.2 cm (36 × 30 in) Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London 49.07 pp. 6–9 Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion 1944 Oil and pastel on fibreboard Triptych, each panel 94 × 74 cm (37 × 29 in) Tate, London 44.01

p. 27 ‘Watercolour’ 1929 Watercolour, gouache, pencil and black ink on paper, 21 × 14 cm (8¼ × 5½ in) Private collection 29.01 p. 28 ‘Painted Screen’ c. 1930 Oil on plywood Triptych, each panel 183 × 61 cm (72 × 24 in) Private collection 30.01 p. 30 Crucifixion 1933 Oil on canvas, 62 × 48.5 cm (24½ × 19 in) Private collection 33.01

p. 56 Figure Study I c. 1945–46 Oil on canvas, 123 × 105.5 cm (48½ × 41½ in) Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. Accepted by H.M. Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 1998 46.01

p. 31 Figures in a Garden c. 1935 Oil, egg tempera and wax on canvas, 112 × 86.5 cm (44 × 34 in) Tate Britain, London 35.01

p. 76 ‘Figure Crouching’ c. 1949 Oil and sand on canvas, 179.6 × 121.3 cm (70¾ × 47¾ in) Private collection 49.10

p. 77 Study from the Human Body 1949 Oil and cotton wool on canvas, 147.5 × 131 cm (58 × 51½ in) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 49.08

p. 78 Painting 1950 Oil on canvas, 198 × 132 cm (78 × 52 in) Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds Museum and Galleries 50.06

p. 79 Study for Crouching Nude 1952 Oil on canvas, 198 × 137 cm (78 × 54 in) Detroit Institute of Arts 52.01

p. 82 Dog 1952 Oil and sand on canvas, 198 × 137 cm (78 × 54 in) Tate, London 52.03

p. 81 Figure with Monkey 1951 Oil on canvas, 66 × 56 cm (26 × 22 in) Private collection 51.01

p. 84 Study for a Portrait 1952 Oil on canvas, 66 × 56 cm (26 × 22 in) Tate Britain, London 52.06

p. 85 Man with Dog 1953 Oil on canvas, 152 × 117 cm (60 × 46 in) Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo 53.06

p. 55 Figure in a Landscape 1945 Oil, pastel and dust on canvas, 144.8 × 128.3 cm (57 × 50½ in) Tate, London 45.05

p. 86 Study of Figure in a Landscape 1952 Oil on canvas, 198 × 137 cm (78 × 54 in) The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. 52.12

p. 87 Landscape, South of France 1952 Oil on canvas, 127 × 101 cm (50 × 39¾ in) Private collection 52.18

p. 57 Figure Study II 1945–46 Oil on canvas, 145 × 129 cm (57 × 50¾ in) Huddersfield Art Gallery 46.02

p. 88 Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X 1953 Oil on canvas, 153 × 118 cm (60¼ × 46½ in) Des Moines Art Center, Iowa 53.02

p. 89 Study of a Baboon 1953 Oil on canvas, 198 × 137 cm (78 × 54 in) The Museum of Modern Art, New York 53.17