Francis Bacon in Art and Celebrity (2003)
Excerpt from John A. Walker’s now-classic book.
In London, during the 1950s, it was the homosexual painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992), who emerged as Britain’s first post-war art star although his full impact took several more decades to achieve. He first became notorious for his striking and cruel imagery— crucifixion scenes, screaming Popes, naked grappling male figures— many of which were based on film stills, mass media photographs and reproductions of past art. Bacon’s painterliness always ensured that horror was tempered by aesthetic pleasure. One thematic exhibition held at the Hanover Gallery in 1957 was a response and contribution to the cult of Vincent van Gogh: it consisted of expressionist-style interpretations of Vincent’s The painter on the road to Tarascon (1888).
Francis Bacon’s reputation as a painter gradually spread until he was regarded as one of the finest in the world. In 1971, the French honoured him with a retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris. While Bacon attended the opening, his lover George Dyer died in their hotel room from an overdose of sleeping pills and alcohol. As time passed, media coverage increased and Bacon was interviewed by the critic David Sylvester 18 times and on television by Melvyn Bragg and profiled in the art press repeatedly. During his lifetime, such photographers as Cecil Beaton, Douglas Glass and John Deakin frequently photographed Bacon sitting amidst the carefully cultivated debris of his London studios; the mess served as a vivid emblem of chaotic creativity, and as a sign of Bacon’s contempt for such bourgeois values as cleanliness and neatness. In 2001, the contents of his Kensington studio at 7 Reece Mews— even the dust— were placed on public display in Dublin, his city of birth. [1] Like so many other artists’ studios, it will be a place of pilgrimage for art lovers.
As Francis Bacon became better known, stories about his private life and habits filtered into the public domain, namely, his childhood habits of sleeping with stable boys and dressing in his mother’s clothes, the time he spent in decadent Berlin during the 1920s, the heavy drinking sessions in Soho pubs and clubs (particularly the Colony Room, a club depicted by the painter Michael Andrews in 1962), his circle of friends, his passion for violent sex with proletarian petty criminals, his table talk and his acts of cruelty and generosity. The logical culminations of this process are frank biographies and biopics. Daniel Farson wrote an example of the former in 1995 in which Bacon’s life was characterised as "gilded gutter". An example of the latter, entitled Love is the devil, was premiered in 1998; it was directed by John Maybury and starred Derek Jacobi as the painter. [...]
Even after his death, news stories about Francis Bacon recurred because of legal disputes over his estate (worth £11 million), the emergence of previously unknown drawings, arguments about the authenticity of certain works, and the accusation that his dealers had cheated him out of millions of pounds. Few critics would want to deny the powerful impact and high aesthetic quality of Bacon’s paintings dating from the 1940s and 1950s but he did repeat himself as he aged. However, it is my contention that he deserves to be counted as an art star because of his fame and the attention that has been paid to his private life and enigmatic personality.
Reference:
[1] See: John Edwards and Perry Ogden. 7 Reece Mews: Francis Bacon’s studio. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001).
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