From the very beginning Francis Bacon has devoted himself to painting, and only painting. Never did he produce anything in preparation to his paintings. With the exception of his triptych of Three Figures at the base of a Crucifixion (1944), he produced all his paintings on stretched canvas.
Francis found out by chance that he much preferred painting on the back side of a canvas, the side that was not coated in gesso. He had run out of material and in a last effort try to finish the work he needed to for his deadline, he had to paint on the back of an already finished painting.
Bacon also would mix material, such as oil and tempera, in the same piece. Often changing in paint because of the speed at which it dries. He never varnished his paintings, instead he'd rather cover them with glass at a later date, when he was sure it was completely dried, and would accept the glare and minor distortion it caused to the painting.
In most cases Bacon would paint with the traditional paint brushes, but on occasion he would use his fingers, are press a cloth on to the wet surface to give it a texture.*
*. "Bacon, Francis." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 28, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T005594
Monday, April 28, 2014
Mr. Lewis
"Of the younger artists none actually paints as beautifully as Francis Bacon. I have seen paintings of his that remind me of Velasques and like that master he is fond of blacks. Liquid whitish accents are delicately dropped upon the sable ground, like blobs of mucus - or else there is the cold white glitter of an eyeball, or of an eye distended with despairing insult behind a shouting mouth, distended also to hurl insults. Otherwise it is a baleful regard from the mask of a decaying clubman or business executive - so decayed that usually part of the head is rotting away into space. But black is his pictorial element."*
Wyndham Lewis wrote this concerning Francis Bacon, and how he compares to the other artists of his generation. He uses such contradicting words to describe Bacon's work, its beautiful, but also gruesome and disgusting.
*Brighton, Andrew. "Francis Bacon's Modernism." Critical Quarterly 42, no. 1 (Spring2000 2000): 137. Literary Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed April 28, 2014).
Wyndham Lewis wrote this concerning Francis Bacon, and how he compares to the other artists of his generation. He uses such contradicting words to describe Bacon's work, its beautiful, but also gruesome and disgusting.
*Brighton, Andrew. "Francis Bacon's Modernism." Critical Quarterly 42, no. 1 (Spring2000 2000): 137. Literary Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed April 28, 2014).
Into the Light
Beginning in the 1950's Francis Bacon developed a new kind of style, one in which it was much less distorted. The images also seemed to resemble events and people that he encountered in real life, of these types of paintings included a series he started in 1954 called Man in Blue I - VII. This series was made up of a single man in a business suit, in front of a plain wall, painted in a dark deep blue hue.
Moving out of the darkness of the paintings he's done before, Bacon did a study on Vincent van Gogh, and slowly the overwhelming darkness was eliminated from his paintings. He did seven of these paintings with van Gogh's paintings as inspiration. This series consisted of nearly life size figures with short, frantic brushstrokes. Much like van Gogh's but more convulsive.
In the late 1950's Bacon started another series, which he is focusing on a single figure, occasionally nude, sitting in a brightly lit space on a couch, or other piece of furniture. The figures in these paintings are much more detailed and solid, instead of vanishing into the background.*
*. "Bacon, Francis." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 28, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T005594
Moving out of the darkness of the paintings he's done before, Bacon did a study on Vincent van Gogh, and slowly the overwhelming darkness was eliminated from his paintings. He did seven of these paintings with van Gogh's paintings as inspiration. This series consisted of nearly life size figures with short, frantic brushstrokes. Much like van Gogh's but more convulsive.
In the late 1950's Bacon started another series, which he is focusing on a single figure, occasionally nude, sitting in a brightly lit space on a couch, or other piece of furniture. The figures in these paintings are much more detailed and solid, instead of vanishing into the background.*
*. "Bacon, Francis." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 28, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T005594
Sunday, April 27, 2014
As told by Greenberg
Clement Greenberg was born the same year as Francis Bacon, in 1909. Greenberg was the most influential art critic of this day and time. Essentially Greenberg was the difference between an artist making it big in the world or flopping right on his/her face.
In comment to Francis Bacon's art, Greenberg said that Bacon was not a Modernist, instead he was "attempting to make art in a redundant grand manner."* In 1968 Greenberg was interviewed concerning what he thought about Francis Bacon as an artist.
"I go for his things at the same time that I see through and around them. It's as though I can watch him putting his pictures together ... I behold the cheapest, coarsest, least felt application of paint matter I can visualize, along with the most transparent, up-to-date devices ... Bacon is the one example in our time of inspired safe taste - taste that's inspired in the way in which it searches out the most up-to-date of your 'rehearsed responses.' Some day, if I live long enough, I'll look back on Bacon's art as a precious curiosity of our period."*
*Brighton, Andrew. "Francis Bacon's Modernism." Critical Quarterly 42, no. 1 (Spring2000 2000): 137. Literary Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed April 28, 2014).
In comment to Francis Bacon's art, Greenberg said that Bacon was not a Modernist, instead he was "attempting to make art in a redundant grand manner."* In 1968 Greenberg was interviewed concerning what he thought about Francis Bacon as an artist.
"I go for his things at the same time that I see through and around them. It's as though I can watch him putting his pictures together ... I behold the cheapest, coarsest, least felt application of paint matter I can visualize, along with the most transparent, up-to-date devices ... Bacon is the one example in our time of inspired safe taste - taste that's inspired in the way in which it searches out the most up-to-date of your 'rehearsed responses.' Some day, if I live long enough, I'll look back on Bacon's art as a precious curiosity of our period."*
*Brighton, Andrew. "Francis Bacon's Modernism." Critical Quarterly 42, no. 1 (Spring2000 2000): 137. Literary Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed April 28, 2014).
Change in Homosexuality
Francis Bacon moved out of his parents house when he was 17, and spent eight weeks directly after in Berlin. This just so happened to be during 1927, a time that homosexuality was a very open practice. Directly after this wild eight weeks of his life, he went to Paris for the next year and a half where he discovered his true interest in art, he spent his time going to galleries and viewing paintings of all sorts. Bacon then decided to go back to London and for the next two to three years tried his hand at becoming an interior decorator, while at the same time experimenting with water color and drawings. Between 1950 and 1951 Bacon held two exhibitions in his own studio. He made his furniture in an art deco style, this time in Bacon's life was very short lived, however, it did find its way back into his art, showing up in his paintings.*
It was at this time that Francis started representing homosexuality, which at this time was a very dangerous thing to do, due to the fact that it had not been made legal Britain. Bacon was the first to not only use it in his art, but to make it very obvious in his paintings. He showed an almost obsession with the human form, more specifically the male human form. They started out at first as a more innocent, or innocuous, such as Study from the Human Body (1949). Over time they became more and more evident to be screaming homosexual, such as Two Figures in the Grass (1954).** It wasn't that he didn't ever use the female form, but when he did Bacon "was more concerned with capturing the individual essences of female sitters." When a female showed up in his paintings he wasn't concerned with the nude form, but instead focused mostly on the head-and-neck or kept the figure fully clothed.
*. "Bacon, Francis." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 28, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T005594
It was at this time that Francis started representing homosexuality, which at this time was a very dangerous thing to do, due to the fact that it had not been made legal Britain. Bacon was the first to not only use it in his art, but to make it very obvious in his paintings. He showed an almost obsession with the human form, more specifically the male human form. They started out at first as a more innocent, or innocuous, such as Study from the Human Body (1949). Over time they became more and more evident to be screaming homosexual, such as Two Figures in the Grass (1954).** It wasn't that he didn't ever use the female form, but when he did Bacon "was more concerned with capturing the individual essences of female sitters." When a female showed up in his paintings he wasn't concerned with the nude form, but instead focused mostly on the head-and-neck or kept the figure fully clothed.
*. "Bacon, Francis." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 28, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T005594
**Arya, Rina. "Constructions of Homosexuality in the Art of Francis Bacon." Journal For Cultural Research 16, no. 1 (January 2012): 43-61. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 28, 2014).
His First Success
During World War II, Francis Bacon was seen unfit to be serve in the armed forces because he has struggled with asthma his whole life. He dated this as the moment from which he considered himself committed to art from that time on. Bacon felt his first successful piece was Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), an abstract triptych that consists of three frightening figures with their mouths unnaturally open wide and their necks stretched out to an extreme degree. The figures are grotesque and gruesome. Upon first look you don't know that they are really even figures until you look at the one on the far left because it has a full head of hair. Without the title of the triptych you wouldn't know that the figures are at the base of a crucifixion, unless you know what you are looking at. The name of these paintings informs the viewer that it is a religious painting.
Francis Bacon describes this painting as a piece about the inhumanity of the world. That at one point someone thought that would be a good way to teach people as a whole to not disobey the Roman rulers.*
*. "Bacon, Francis." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 28, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T005594.
Francis Bacon describes this painting as a piece about the inhumanity of the world. That at one point someone thought that would be a good way to teach people as a whole to not disobey the Roman rulers.*
*. "Bacon, Francis." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 28, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T005594.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Francis Bacon on Religion
Francis Bacon, like many other artists, claimed to be atheist, but always painted religious symbols in his work. The first painting that he was widely recognized for was the Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion in 1944. A short number of years later he also produces a series of painting in which he took Portrait of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velázquez and distorted and painted him rather unpleasantly and screaming.* Francis Bacon did not limit his use of religious symbols. He used them all throughout his painting career, resurfacing in a wide number of his work. It is rather unorthodox that a man that claimed disbelief in something to put so much dependency on the topic, Bacon felt the topic of religion needed to be addressed and this is what he sought to do, and achieved.**
"One possible psychoanalytical explanation is that Bacon conflated his own father with the symbolic Father, and so the Pope becomes a reminder of the rejection that he suffered in his family life."** Bacon's goal in depicted the Pope in this way was to show his viewers how he sees the world, as if the world did not have a God. However, once was not enough. He had to resurface the topic multiple times in his work, and show the demise of the Pope. Bacon painted more that twenty-five images of the Pope all inspired by the same painting by Velázquez. The first two paintings he did as a study of Velázquez's painting he later destroyed before it was supposed to be shown in an exhibition at the Hanover Gallery.**
The next papal series he did in 1951 were inspired by a photograph of Pope Pius XII. These were monochromatic painting that resembled his later series entitled Man in Blue. Bacon paints the Pope in a raised throne of sorts that extends him closer to the foreground and allows the Pope to be scrutinized to an even higher degree than if he were at a comfortable distance.
Three from Bacon's series "The Screaming Pope"
Bacon's "Study of three figures at the base of a Crucifixion"
*Encyclopedia Britannica. "Francis Bacon." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com (accessed April 12, 2014).
**Arya, Rina. "Assaying the Pope: Francis Bacon's Interrogation of Religion. ." Implicit Religion 14, no. 3 (2011): 343-359. EBSCOhost (accessed Rebruary 13, 2014)
"One possible psychoanalytical explanation is that Bacon conflated his own father with the symbolic Father, and so the Pope becomes a reminder of the rejection that he suffered in his family life."** Bacon's goal in depicted the Pope in this way was to show his viewers how he sees the world, as if the world did not have a God. However, once was not enough. He had to resurface the topic multiple times in his work, and show the demise of the Pope. Bacon painted more that twenty-five images of the Pope all inspired by the same painting by Velázquez. The first two paintings he did as a study of Velázquez's painting he later destroyed before it was supposed to be shown in an exhibition at the Hanover Gallery.**
The next papal series he did in 1951 were inspired by a photograph of Pope Pius XII. These were monochromatic painting that resembled his later series entitled Man in Blue. Bacon paints the Pope in a raised throne of sorts that extends him closer to the foreground and allows the Pope to be scrutinized to an even higher degree than if he were at a comfortable distance.
Bacon's "Study of three figures at the base of a Crucifixion"
*Encyclopedia Britannica. "Francis Bacon." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com (accessed April 12, 2014).
**Arya, Rina. "Assaying the Pope: Francis Bacon's Interrogation of Religion. ." Implicit Religion 14, no. 3 (2011): 343-359. EBSCOhost (accessed Rebruary 13, 2014)
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