By Vernon Silver and Anabela Reis, Bloomberg, February 04, 2010

                                     Francis Bacon’s 1983 Oedipus and the Sphinx, after Ingres

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) - On a December afternoon in 2007, billionaire Jose Berardo walked into the attorney general’s 18th-century headquarters in Lisbon to rat out executives at the Portuguese bank on which he had staked his fortune.

Sylvester Stallone

In a sun-filled gallery, Berardo examines the 1808 painting Oedipus and the Sphinx by French master Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres that’s on loan from the Louvre in Paris. The painting is being installed next to the work that it inspired, Francis Bacon’s 1983 Oedipus and the Sphinx, after Ingres. Berardo owns the Bacon painting.

“You know who used to own this one? Stallone!” Berardo shouts, referring to actor Sylvester Stallone. Berardo recounts how he ran into Stallone and told him, “I’ve got your Bacon!”

The title of this quartet of new stories by British novelist and satirist Will Self is almost as charming as it is aggressive. There are doubtless thousands of stories and novels whose titles contain the word "heart," but only Self, with his passion for the grotesque, the comic and the fantastical, would name a collection of stories after the "noble organ" - as 17th-century British physician William Harvey termed the liver - that most Westerners probably now think of as little more than a sickening item in their grocer's meat display case, a glossy, shrink-wrapped slab of brownish viscera, bleeding out onto its foam tray.

Each of the four "lobes" in Self's Liver - a collection of vaguely linked "hepatofictions" - features one or more human livers. Most of them are cirrhotic or cancerous, and all of them are in wretched condition, as are their owners, whose dismal maladies serve as metaphors for toxic decay. Decay is so pervasive, in fact, that in Self's story Prometheus, it affects even the diseased "body" of London, host to the "tumour of the Swiss Re tower, the tapeworm of the Thames, the fatty deposits of Broadgate and the Barbican."

Decay also affects the Plantation Club, the private Soho drinking establishment that provides the setting for the collection's lead story, Foie Humain. The club's proprietor repeatedly spikes his barman/lover's lager with vodka, performing upon him a kind of human gavage, not unlike the force-feeding that goose farmers do in the Dordogne when making foie gras. In the end, however, it's the proprietor himself who loses his liver - to a most unlikely chef. But the story's brilliance lies not in its narrative, which feels at once too clotted and too saggy, "proceeding not with straightforward honesty," as the narrator himself describes it, "but waddling through needless digressions and lunging into grotesque interpolations." Rather, Self's brilliance lies in his acute rendering of the miasmal Plantation Club, "an aquarium filled with absinthe," which he models closely on the Colony Room in London's Soho, the private drinking club founded in 1948 by the famously rude and foul-mouthed Muriel Belcher. She adopted as her "daughter" one of the club's first members, the painter Francis Bacon, who appears in Self's story as a world-famous painter of "brachiating apes," "well-built nudes" and "neotenous golems, their heads part skull, part the melted plastic of dolls." It's there in the Plantation Club - "an establishment where stasis was the prevailing mode," with "a permanently fizzing rod of neon screwed to the nicotine ceiling, lending a mortuary ambience to the already deathly scene" -- that Self's bohemians destroy themselves with alcohol and the cruelly lacerating remarks they regard as wit.

Thanks to its startling language and grim sense of humour, along with its almost ceaseless sense of claustrophobia, Foie Humain is arguably the collection's best story, along with the novella Leberknödel (liver dumplings), in which a widowed hospital administrator travels to Zurich, with "its reassuring orderliness, its stolid vitality," to be euthanized in a private clinic. Once there, however, she changes her mind, and soon afterward her disease goes into an inexplicable remission that the local Catholics who befriend her regard as a miracle. Although the novella's elements never fully cohere -- its chapters, for instance, are named for the parts of the Mass, and it alludes repeatedly to Carol Reed's The Third Man, with Orson Welles and Trevor Howard – Leberknödel is the only work in this collection in which Self drops his ironic tone, particularly in his empathetic depiction of the protagonist's pained and aging body.

Still, these are largely what one might regard as high-concept stories, inspired and constructed more from the shrewdness of wit and intellect than from feeling. In Prometheus, for instance, a London advertising man allows a griffon vulture to feed on his liver in exchange for renewing his "genius at breathing fire into the most sodden products." In Birdy Num Num, which takes its title from a Peter Sellers routine in Blake Edwards's 1968 movie, The Party, the narrator is a hepatitis C virus, observing a chaotic gathering of infected human hosts.

Certainly, there are real and original pleasures to be had from these stories, particularly from Self's extravagant and startling sense of language, as well as from the imaginative extremity of his vision. But they are not warm or merciful. These are for those who like their stories brainy, cunning, hard-edged and diabolical.

McCann is the author, most recently, of Mother of Sorrows, a collection of linked stories. He teaches at American University.

Ces vers hantant Bacon 

ENTRETIENS. Parler amusait le peintre anglais. 

Franck Maubert publie leur longue conversation

Sud Ouest, Dimanche 06 Décembre 2009

C'est un opuscule indispensable pour qui, un jour, fut saisi d'effarement par la peinture de Francis Bacon : entre répulsion pour ses corps de douleur et fascination hypnotique pour ses hommes sans visage, donc sans émotion, sans autre identité que celle de leurs cris. Sur cette oeuvre majeure et sa gestation, le livre de Franck Maubert se lit et se relit. Y est rapportée avec un souci du fait la longue conversation que ce journaliste d'art eut avec le peintre anglais pendant trois ans, dans les années 80.

Dans son logement nu jusqu'aux ampoules, dans son atelier que les ordures encroûtent de saleté, l'artiste se livre par bribes, aussi désespéré que vivant. D'une oeuvre de Poussin qui le traversa à 20 ans aux étals d'un boucher qui le bouleverse, le peintre raconte que seules les images extraordinaires et violentes aimantent son imaginaire : les rouges, les jaunes, les orange, le gras, la viande. Citant l'impensable vers d'Eschyle - « L'odeur du sang humain ne me quitte pas des yeux » - ou le tranchant « Macbeth » de Shakespeare, Bacon évoque Picasso, Velázquez ou Giacometti, son amour de la littérature, son amitié avec Duras, son absolue passion de la poésie.

Du thé qui le lave à l'aube, quand il rejoint l'atelier, à l'alcool qui accompagne ses déambulations de fins de journée, de son indifférence à l'argent qu'il gagna de son vivant : tout éclaire celui qui cherchait ce réalisme clinique et froid, sans émotion mais « capable paradoxalement de provoquer un grand sentiment ».

« L'odeur du sang humain ne me quitte pas des yeux », de Franck Maubert, éd. Mille et Une Nuits, 80 p., 12 ?.

Frank Auerbach's solitary obsessional world

His work sells for millions, but the artist refuses to dwell on past traumas or move from his shabby north London studio

Deirdre Fernand, The Sunday Times, December 6, 2009

His coffee is getting horribly cold, but he doesn’t care. The afternoon light is fading and there’s important work to be done today. As there will be tomorrow and the day after. For the past 55 years, the artist Frank Auerbach has lived and worked in a modest studio down an alley in the London borough of Camden. Rising early and finishing late, he is totally absorbed and, at the age of 78, says there is nothing he would rather do. “I work all the time because I have always felt time is short,” he says. He never takes a holiday and rarely leaves London, let alone Britain. “I don’t recommend this way of working as a virtue; it suits me, it’s my temperament,” he says. “I do think that if I hadn’t been able to do this, I would have felt a deep sense of loss and waste with my life. The only way was to carry on painting.” Would he consider himself obsessional? “Oh yes, I hope so.”

Along with Lucian Freud and David Hockney, Auerbach is acknowledged to be one of the Grand Old Men of British painting. Together with the late Francis Bacon, who died in 1992, this group has dominated the British scene since the 1950s. And this particular Grand Old Man, notoriously private, rarely gives interviews. But he has made an exception for The Sunday Times on the occasion of his latest exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Gathering together his earliest works, it’s called London Building Sites 1952-1962, but it may as well be titled View From a Bus. It was riding around at the top of a double-decker, observing the bomb-damaged city, that gave him his earliest inspiration. These pictures of craters and pits, majestic in their beauty, have reminded the critics just how good he is. As one reviewer put it, “True art is kept safe in the strong hands of Auerbach.”

It was always safe in his hands. Long before today’s YBAs were born, Auerbach was a respected figure of the art world. Unlike them, however, he was never the object of sensational hype, merely of consistent praise. When the eminent art critic David Sylvester visited his first exhibition in 1955, he pronounced it “the most exciting and impressive first one-man show by an English painter since Francis Bacon in 1949”.

But if posing can be a chore, so can painting. “You do it and nothing happens and you do it again. But there’s always the possibility that you might do something marvellous and totally unpredictable and surprise yourself… Eventually it seems that the painting happens.” Later, he adds: “I think there’s an analogy in a woman bringing up a family. There’s a lot of work, then there’s an epiphany. For perhaps one and a half hours a week you are in touch with what it’s all for.” That’s the key to remaining engaged. Auerbach is always waiting to “clinch the image”, revealing “the buried truth” of his picture — what Bacon used to call “the lucky strike”.

Auerbach was born in 1931 in Berlin to German-Jewish parents who sent their precious only child, aged nearly eight, to England just before the outbreak of war. He never saw them again. They were killed in the death camps. He thinks they were sent to Auschwitz but has never bothered to find out. “What difference does it make which camp they were taken to?” he asks. “They died.”

He doesn’t drink in Soho any more. He remains close to Freud, but his friendship with Bacon ended long before the latter’s death. Bacon had dismissed his work saying: “I hate that kind of sloppy sort of Central European painting.” According to Freud, Bacon was jealous: “My feeling is when he became successful, Francis turned against him.”

Doom, gloom and Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst: Nothing Matters

How Alien burst forth, bloomed and mutated

It is 30 years since Ridley Scott made cinematic history by putting a woman centre-stage in a horror movie. Xan Brooks celebrates.

Sydney Morning Herald, December 5, 2009

                                            Alien

It is 30 years since Ridley Scott's picture was unleashed on an unsuspecting public. Since then, its influence has bloomed and mutated. Alien was the film that set the visual template (grungy and industrial) for any director keen to shoot a picture about monsters in outer space. It was the film that contained a grisly, chest-bursting centrepiece that tapped into the fears of the age. Yet ultimately it all comes back to the character Ellen Ripley. In the figure of the resolute Sigourney Weaver, Alien may just be the film that overhauled the old, unreconstructed horror genre and dared to put a woman centre-stage.

This gave rise to Scott's joke that nothing actually happens for the first 45 minutes. In its opening sections, Alien rattles around a space freighter (the Nostromo) and introduces us to its bickering crew (John Hurt and Ian Holm among them). Then boom! The film bursts into hideous life with one of cinema's most notorious setpieces. Hurt's character, impregnated by an extraterrestrial, abruptly goes into labour at the breakfast table. His chest explodes and the beast is loosed.

In Scott's film, the horror came garnished with sexual politics. Take another look at the creature that hatches from Hurt's chest. It was designed by the Swiss artist H.R. Giger, who borrowed freely from the images in Francis Bacon's 1944 painting Three Studies For Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which in turn took its lead from the Greek myth of the Furies. Scott's film was initially pitched as ''Jaws in space'' and Giger's alien features the requisite razor-blade teeth and unreadable, implacable air. Sometimes it is limpid and wet, fashioned on the set out of oysters and clams brought in from a local fishmongers. Sometimes it is hard and blunt. Not to put too fine a point on it, the alien in Alien comes in two guises: vaginal and phallic.  

                                                                      Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion 1944 

''Alien is a rape movie with male victims,'' explains David McIntee, the author of the Alien study Beautiful Monsters. ''And it also shows the consequences of that rape: the pregnancy and birth. It is a film that plays, very deliberately, with male fears of female reproduction.''

Does this make Alien a conservative film or a radical one? Over the years the debate has been teased out in either direction. In the opinion of the cultural critic Barbara Creed, Scott's film epitomised what she refers to as ''the monstrous feminine''. It trades in classic Freudian imagery (penis-shaped monsters; dark, womb-like interiors) and shudders at the bloody spectacle of childbirth. Here is a horror film made by men that exploits a particularly male fear of all that is female. Others beg to differ. Ripley, they argue, is the game-changer; the character who sends Alien (and its sequels) off in a bold new direction. ''Ripley is pretty revolutionary,'' insists McIntee. ''All of a sudden you have a horror film that has a younger female character who is a survivor and a heroine as opposed to a victim.''

Nothing Matters, White Cube, London

Britart's bad boy gets his paints out again, but the results are not exactly Bacon ... more like a dog's breakfast

Reviewed by Charles Darwent , Independent on Sunday, 29 November 2009

Lest you are newly back from Mars, something in the nature of a miracle has happened in British art: Damien Hirst has begun to paint. In Hirst's work, the artist's hand became a metonym of the flesh and the flesh of mortality. Rid art of the hand and, vampire-like, it might never die.

So the insistent hands-on-ness of Hirst's new work is historically significant, whether you like it or not. And frankly, I don't. Who could? Underlying this work is the belief that you can, in middle age, take up painting and have the results shown at the most important contemporary gallery in London as if by right. And guess what? If your name is Damien Hirst, you can. But, other than as historical curiosities, will paintings made under such an assumption ever be worth looking at? Can they in any sense be good?

Let me say that "good" here is not another word for polished or skilled: Bad Painting, done well, has a solid place in 20th-century art. But there is Bad Painting and bad painting, and Hirst's work is the second.

In the ground floor space at Mason's Yard are canvases done largely in blue. Hirst's Blue Period – he has been painting for nearly two years now – echoes not so much Picasso's as Francis Bacon's, particularly the Savile-Row-blue images Bacon made of his lover, Peter Lacy, when he, like Hirst, was 44. Downstairs are Bacon-ish triptychs in Bacon-ish frames surrounding such Bacon-ish things as anatomised bodies and empty staircases.

Of course, Hirst has also made anatomical figures, most famously the 20ft bronze doll, Hymn. I suppose the frame of his trademark shark-in-a-box might explain the sketchy white lines, apparently lifted from Bacon's pope-cages, that score the surface of Walk Away in Silence – the shark jaws in Insomnia and Time Will Tell certainly refer less to Bacon than to a Bacon-like tendency in Hirst. And then there are the smaller (and, to my mind, better) paintings of the object with which Hirst is most closely identified as an artist, namely the human skull.

All of which raises a great many questions, the most obvious of which is why? Hirst, with his vitrines of flyblown meat, has always been a Baconite. Why does he now feel the need to work like Bacon? A triptych called How Did We Lose Our Way? may suggest an answer. Bacon died mid-way between Freeze and Sensation, the two shows that made Hirst's name. Could the younger man's return to paint on canvas mark an admission that the Britart experiment has, in the end, been a failure? Seen like this, the dreadfulness of Hirst's painting might be excused as intentional, a sign that something has been lost in British art and that that loss is irreparable.

I certainly prefer this possibility to the other, which is that Damien Hirst feels he can paint by dint of being Damien Hirst. This, appallingly, is not the case. I went to White Cube determined not to fall into the British trap of thinking that artists can only do one thing well, that installationists and conceptualists can not also be painters. Look at Michelangelo. I left with a sense of sadness that a man whose pills and diamond-covered skull will remain icons of his time should have been laid so low.

Realism meets surrealism in Rome’s painting exhibition

by Silvia Marchetti, China View, 27-11-2009

ROME, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) - The Galleria Borghese of Rome, one of the world's leading museums, is hosting till Jan. 14 the unique painting exhibition Caravaggio-Bacon.

    Caravaggio is one of most profound and revolutionary 16th century Italian painter, while English artist Francis Bacon is a 20th century Expressionist artist deeply influenced by Surrealism.

    The occasion for a joint exhibition of their works by the Galleria is the celebration of two concurrent dates: the quarter-centenary of Caravaggio's death and Francis Bacon's birth centenary which fall this year.

    The Caravaggio-Bacon exhibition is the fourth of a series of 10 that Rome's Galleria Borghese is staging. It follows ones of the great Renaissance artists Raffaello, Canova and Correggio.

    There are 13 works of Caravaggio on display and 17 of Bacon, most of which coming from the Tate Art Gallery of London. The curators of the exposition are Anna Coliva, director of the Galleria, and Michael Peppiatt, a biographer, intimate friend, and leading connoisseur of Francis Bacon.

    On Wednesday evening the gallery invited the foreign press to admire the exhibition. Italian Culture Minister Sandro Bondi and Undersecretary of State Paolo Bonaiuti attended the event.

    "The Galleria Borghese is one of the artistic temples of our country and Italian culture is one of the main reasons why Italy is admired worldwide," Bondi said.

    He added that the government was working hard to make Italy's cultural heritage become an instrument for civil, social, democratic growth and not only economic growth.

    Bonaiuti stressed the importance of culture as "the key to Italian tradition, society and way of being."

    Coliva said the event was an occasion to present the historic collections of the Galleria Borghese through an unusual artistic juxtaposition.

    "Caravaggio and Bacon are 400 years apart from one another but what links them is a spiritual relation based on a deep suffering for the human condition and an internal sense of devastation," Coliva told Xinhua.

    She explained how these two extreme figures have entered the collective imagination as "accused" artists, who expressed the torment of existence in their painting with equal intensity and creative brilliance.

    Coliva said that both are painters of truth. While Caravaggio distorts the artistic formal vision rooted in Humanism by dealing with human figures as objective facts, Bacon expresses the loss of centrality of vision by mixing the unconscious with reality.

    However, the goal of the joint exposition is not to theorize an influence of Caravaggio on Bacon. "There is nothing of Caravaggio in Bacon, who was not inspired by him, but if there is a contemporary artist who is comparable to Caravaggio it is indeed Bacon. Caravaggio and Bacon are among the deepest and most revolutionary interpreters of the representation of the human figure," added Coliva.

    Michael Peppiatt underlined how both artists were obsessed by the human body and by the uncertainty of life. "It's an emotional impact that links the two together, they're like mirrors," he told Xinhua.

    The exhibition is a meeting between these two extraordinary artists and you can nearly sense an electric current uniting them, he said, adding how both Caravaggio and Bacon "are very extreme in showing the fragility and vulnerability of human life."

    "For Francis Bacon, one of the most anguished 20th century artists, being received at the Galleria Borghese is of great importance," Peppiatt said. "Bacon's breakaway from tradition is healed today through his presence in this gallery."

    Bondi also said the original juxtaposition Caravaggio-Bacon helped to better understand art in all its different variations by "leading the public inside our museums to discover our great artists."

    Caravaggio (1571-1610) was active in Rome (where he painted for the Pope), Naples and Malta. He had a very tormented life and was accused of murder. His intensely emotional realism and dramatic use of lighting make him a founder of modern painting.

    Francis Bacon (1909-1992), just like Caravaggio, was an anguished painter. The subjects of his paintings scream in physical and psychic pain. He depicts contorted and corrupted human and animal forms. Many of Bacon's works appear as nightmares.

Editor: Xiong Tong

Damien Hirst brings home the Bacon, but it’s just ham

After another set of derivative paintings, this time at the White Cube, it’s time for Damien Hirst to give it a rest

Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times, November 25, 2009

Damien Hirst is undaunted. It was only a few weeks ago that a show of his paintings opened at the Wallace Collection in London. The critics were like sharks swimming free of their pickling platitudes. They spotted their victim and ripped him to shreds.

Any less robust ego might well have given up. But Hirst didn’t get where he has done through listening to others. He kept his nerve and remained resolute. Just give him a bit more time and he would be painting as well as Rembrandt, he responded. And already he’s back.

Tomorrow, a new show of his work — titled, with a dash of bravura, Nothing Matters — opens at the White Cube. His gallery fires back at detractors with both barrels. It has dedicated both its London spaces to the works of its most important money-spinner. With prices ranging from £235,000 to £9.5 million, this exhibition looks set to be surefire commercial hit. Four of seven large-scale triptychs have, apparently, already been sold.

The visitor, however, cannot expect to see the works of a contemporary Rembrandt yet. These paintings have not moved on much from the Wallace pictures. They are ham-fisted melodramas. Here, in the Hoxton Square gallery, are huge triptychs of crows. The birds appear to have been caught up in a paint-balling splatter-fest. Black creatures explode in a splash of flung pigment and stuck-on feathers. Hirst has a boyish, B-movie fascination for their death.

His admiration for the work of Francis Bacon — for everything from his gilt frames to his flat planes of colour, his isolated figures and his eerie blue Insect-o-cutor-style glow — is obvious. There is even a figure screaming inside a cage of fragile lines.

So is this the end for Hirst? Has the pack leader, who led his Goldsmiths-trained, cocaine and vodka-fuelled gang in the now famous (though few went at the time) Freeze show in Docklands into the hallowed halls of the Royal Academy, finally run out of ideas?

I don’t think so. Hirst from his earliest beginnings was enthralled by the work of Bacon. His animals in formaldehyde, his finest and most famous pieces and the only ones so far that I think art history will remember him for, are basically transpositions of Bacon’s vision into sculpture. Instead of a screaming pope he has a shark’s gaping mouth. Instead of a painted cage, he has a metal-framed tank.

Hirst wades awkwardly through a medium that he has not yet learned how to manage towards a clearer vision. His first steps are predictably derivative. His greatest predecessors, Bacon not the least prominent among them, looted others’ ideas. But his mistake will be to continue to treat these early efforts as accomplished artworks.

Nothing Matters is at White Cube Hoxton Square, N1, and Mason’s Yard, SW1, from today to January 30 

Damien Hirst: A painter's progress

Barely a month since his first show of paintings was panned, Damien Hirst is back with two more. Is he trying too hard?

Adrian Searle, The Guardian, Tuesday 24 November 2009

With their triptych formats, hefty gold frames and glazed surfaces, Damien Hirst’s new paintings, which fill both White Cube galleries in London, once again recall Francis Bacon.

There are further nods to Bacon within the paintings: figures who turn and squirm, cigarette butts underfoot, linear space frames. There are also worryingly vacant chairs: are they meant for us? Has somebody died? Rather than Bacon's door handles, taps, blind-pulls and switches, Hirst gives us butcher's knives (recalling the jangling cutlery in certain Picassos, painted in the hungry years of the war), and his familiar ashtrays and fag packets; there is a glass of red wine that could have come from a later painting by Patrick Caulfield. Hirst no longer drinks or smokes.

While certain Bacon figures look on the verge of turning themselves inside-out, Hirst's already have. His viscerated meat-men and skeletons hang about, waiting for a death that's already happened: they just haven't noticed yet. There is almost nothing but death in Hirst's new show.

Where Bacon was grandly, sometimes campily theatrical (grand guignol is the phrase often used, to the point of cliché), Hirst is more often hammy. And while Bacon managed both restraint and libidinous assault in his best work – the restraint adding to the squeamishness and implied violence – Hirst has often appeared, since the late 1990s, less ambitious for his art than for his career and for fame.

Sobered up and serious, Hirst has turned to painting, and painting takes a long time to master – if one is ever to master it at all. One might see what he is doing as brave, in the sense that he unashamedly exposes his vulnerabilities and weaknesses as an artist. But ambitious though his paintings are, they appear to be trying to look like successful art, rather than actually being so. They are concoctions, confections, rather than unified or achieved paintings. Hirst acknowledges Rembrandt, Goya and El Greco among his heroes, all of whom are insurmountable in many ways. Bacon's mannerisms, meanwhile, are unapproachable: there is the particularity of his signature style, its artificiality, his marshalling of extreme contrasts of facture, premeditation and impetuosity. Even Bacon ended up parodying himself; you can't, I think, start off by parodying Bacon. Still, you fight your battles of influence and originality where you must.

Bacon, le radici sadomaso del genio

Un saggio di John Richardson: senza i suoi eccessi sarebbe stato solo un pittore incapace di disegnare

LEA MATTARELLA, La Stampa, 24/11/2009

              Francis Bacon in un autoritratto del 1973

L’arte è ossessione della vita» diceva Francis Bacon, il grande pittore scomparso nel 1992 e oggi considerato uno dei maestri del XX secolo. La sua tavolozza però si è nutrita anche di morte, di fantasmi, di sensi di colpa, di dolore inflitto e subìto. Anzi, secondo lo storico dell’arte John Richardson, è stato proprio il lato nero di una vera e propria nevrosi sadomasochista a generare le opere più interessanti e risolte di Bacon. Senza questi aspetti torbidi, senza un’esistenza di eccessi sessuali ad alta gradazione alcolica, l’artista sarebbe stato, magari, soltanto un pittore che «semplicemente non era capace di disegnare». Roma gli ha già aperto le porte della Galleria Borghese in un confronto con un altro pittore estremo come Caravaggio (fino al 20 gennaio).

Richardson ha conosciuto Bacon negli anni Quaranta e oggi, sul New York Review of Books, racconta alcuni aneddoti che aiutano a chiarire anche il suo modo di dipingere e di creare. Tutto comincia con l’episodio di papà Bacon che picchia selvaggiamente il sedicenne Francis dopo averlo trovato con indosso la biancheria intima della madre. Al capitano inglese in pensione che si era trasferito ad allevare e allenare cavalli da corsa a Dublino (dove il pittore nasce nel 1909), l’idea di avere un figlio omosessuale non piaceva per niente. Da qui l’eccesso di violenza cui segue la fuga del giovane che raggiunge Berlino e poi Parigi, dove resta folgorato da Pablo Picasso. Secondo Richardson (che prima di dedicarsi a Bacon ha scritto proprio una delle più apprezzate biografie dell’artista spagnolo), il trauma dello scontro fisico con il padre è all’origine di un vero e proprio disturbo erotico in cui desiderio e sopraffazione - fisica o psicologica - vanno a braccetto.

Così ecco entrare in scena il pilota di caccia Peter Lacy, definito da Richardson un soggetto quasi psicopatico, con cui Bacon ha una relazione tutta sesso e sangue. Tanto che un giorno, in uno «stato di demenza alcolica», il pilota lo fa volare contro una finestra ferendolo al volto. «Dopo - scrive Richardson - Bacon lo amava ancora di più». A quanto pare Lacy sfogava la sua rabbia non solo sull’artista ma anche sulle tele che trovava nello studio. E, per contro, Bacon ha lasciato dell’amante un memorabile ritratto in cui il suo volto sfuggente e deformato contrasta con le linee orizzontali dello sfondo.

«Ogni volta che vado dal macellaio - affermava intanto il pittore - penso che è straordinario che non sia io al posto dell’animale». Ma il passaggio da vittima a carnefice è breve. A farne le spese è la nuova passione di Bacon, George Dyer che si toglie la vita nel bagno di una camera d’albergo nel 1971. L’artista è a Parigi per inaugurare la grande mostra allestita al Grand Palais. Sembra che dopo, impassibile, abbia accompagnato il Presidente Pompidou a visitare l’esposizione e partecipato al pranzo organizzato in suo onore. Dyer aveva tentato il suicidio altre due volte: una in Grecia e l’altra a New York, dove lo stesso Richardson era stato testimone della lite finita con una dose di barbiturici e una bottiglia di scotch. «Bacon lo provocava - scrive lo studioso - fino a ottenere un vero e proprio collasso psicologico. Dopo, nelle prime ore del mattino, quelle che preferiva per lavorare, esorcizzava i suoi sensi di colpa, la sua rabbia e il suo rimorso realizzando immagini di Dyer che, come egli stesso amava dire, miravano a colpire il nostro sistema nervoso».

Il suo amante è inquadrato accovacciato, ferito, crocifisso, abita spazi indefinibili, scatole dell’incertezza, luoghi senz’aria dominati da una claustrofobia che rivela il drammatico stato di tutti gli esseri umani, prigionieri dell’esistenza. E, in effetti, anche dopo la tragica morte, il volto dolente e la carne sofferente di George, il piccolo ex ladruncolo amato ma umiliato e offeso, continua ad alimentare la pittura di Francis. Assieme a pontefici che gridano, carcasse, crocifissioni, ghigni, siringhe conficcate nelle braccia.

Bacon, dice sorprendentemente Richardson, non era capace di articolare la figura nello spazio. «Le sue celebri versioni di Papa Innocenzo X di Velázquez sono un magnifico colpo di fortuna oppure un disastro quasi totale. Era capace di fare un grido ma era senza speranza nel realizzare le mani, così le amputava, le nascondeva, le deformava». Ma lui voleva «dipingere il grido prima dell’orrore» o anche «dipingere come Velázquez ma con una materia pittorica che assomigliasse alla pelle di un ippopotamo». Si comportava come un voyeur a caccia di relitti umani in un disordinato sottosuolo. Un po’ sadomasochista anche lui, come l’antieroe di Dostoevskij, faceva dormire su un tavolo in cucina la sua governante cieca. E la mandava a distrarre i negozianti per poter liberamente rubare generi alimentari, cosmetici e, soprattutto, il lucido da scarpe per tingersi i capelli.

The sado-masochistic relationships that drove Bacon to create his best works

Ross Lydall, London Evening Standard, 23.11.09

             “Intensified imagery”: Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon was once thrown through a plate-glass window by an enraged lover, damaging his face so badly that his right eye had to be sewn back into place, according to a biographer.

Art historian John Richardson also argues that Bacon's best work was inspired by sado-masochistic relationships - with his "goading" of one lover, George Dyer, eventually leading to the latter's death. The fatal end, in a hotel room lavatory, on the eve of a retrospective of the artist's paintings in Paris in 1971, was immortalised by Bacon in one of his most famous works.

Richardson, 85, who is completing the final volume of his biography of Picasso, uses an article in the forthcoming edition of the New York Review of Books to reveal secrets of Bacon's life - a man he knew since the Forties when the artist was in his early twenties.

Richardson recalls that Bacon, who died in 1992, revelled in a "most heinous assault" by an earlier lover, Peter Lacy.

He writes: "In a state of alcoholic dementia, he hurled Bacon through a plate glass window. His face was so damaged that his right eye had to be sewn back into place. Bacon loved Lacy even more. For weeks he would not forgive Lucien Freud for remonstrating with his torturer. Mercifully, Lacy moved to Tangier."

In the article, Richardson said there was a direct link between Bacon's desires and his artistic output.

"Bacon would goad George [Dyer] into a state of psychic meltdown and then, in the early hours of the morning - his favourite time to work - he would exorcise his guilt and rage and remorse in images of Dyer aimed, as he said, at the nervous system."

Richardson recalled spending a drunken evening with the pair in New York in 1968, after which Dyer was found by Bacon unconscious on the hotel room floor, having washed down sleeping pills with a bottle of whisky. "The goading worsened, the imagery intensified," Richardson said of Bacon's subsequent work.

Bacon's studio in the Forties was a place of "ramshackle theatricality" where martinis were served in huge Waterford tumblers and a paint-stained garter belt was kicked under a sofa.

Bacon enlisted his blind nanny's help in his shoplifting exploits, when he would steal groceries, cosmetics and Kiwi boot polish for his hair.

Americans don't 'get' Francis Bacon

John Richardson's article on Francis Bacon suggests the inevitable reappraisal of his work has begun.

The Daily Telegraph, 23 November 2009

          Possessed of extraordinary moral courage: Francis Bacon

The huge reputation of some artists in their own country is often baffling to art lovers in another. Which might explain why an article on Francis Bacon by John Richardson, the art critic and celebrated biographer of Picasso, has raised hackles over here.

Though Richardson is English by birth, he’s lived in New York so long it is not surprising that his forthcoming essay on Francis Bacon in the New York Review of Books reflects an American assessment of the painter’s stature, not the much more reverential attitude we have towards him in this country. Richardson was reviewing a show of Bacon’s work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that that received a mixed reception from New York critics who basically just don’t `get’ Bacon. (The same thing happened to Lucian Freud a few years ago). From across the Atlantic Bacon looks like an overrated neo romantic, a good colourist whose pictures of junkies and toilets amount to little more than a good old wallow in self pity.

Richardson is certainly right that much of the later work is weak, the notorious example being those risible paintings of a humanoid wearing only cricket pads, which are said to have been inspired by Bacon’s fantasies about a then-famous blonde hunk who captained England.

Richardson is a distinguished art historian and, just as he did in his magisterial biography of Picasso, he can speak about Bacon with authority because they were friends. But a lot of what he has written about the violent, sado-masochistic nature of Bacon’s relationships with his lovers Peter Lacy and George Dyer is already in the public domain. Richardson’s insight, that Bacon’s best work is fuelled by anger and pain, sounds right, but then even the Bacon biopic Love is the Devil connected his creativity to his penchant for violent sex.

I have only read the a filleted version of what may well be a much more balanced piece in the New York Review, but friends who knew Bacon tell me that the version I saw gives a distorted picture of a man who, when not being hurled through plate glass windows by his boyfriends, was courteous, cultured, highly educated and possessed of extraordinary moral courage. But that’s ok. Richardson is writing as a critic, not a biographer, and the official biography, which is in preparation, will give us a more rounded portrait of the man.

Richardson makes much of Bacon’s inability to draw. That’s absolutely true, but perhaps the really interesting thing isn’t that Bacon didn’t draw, but that he is a rare phenomenon – a painter who didn’t feel the need to draw at any stage in his creative process – apart from rough notes that are more like ideas for paintings than studies. In taking the formidable critic David Sylvester to task for defending Bacon, what Richardson may be forgetting is that when Sylvester became the artist’s champion in the late 1940s, Bacon needed every defender he could get. As often happens when a critic has been writing about the work of a particular artist for many years, Sylvester was certainly too kind and definitely included paintings in his Bacon exhibitions that should never have seen the light of day. As this volley from John Richardson suggests, the inevitable reappraisal has already begun.

Francis Bacon 'nearly lost eye in assault by psychopathic lover'

Matthew Moore, The Daily Telegraph, 23 November 2009

               Francis Bacon by Arnold Newman 1975

Francis Bacon nearly lost an eye after being thrown through a glass window by his "psychopathic" lover Peter Lacy, a biographer has recounted.

But the acclaimed painter was so stimulated by sadomasochism that he "loved Lacy even more" after the assault and criticised friends who tried to intervene.

The art historian John Richardson has disclosed new details of his friend Bacon's tempestuous relationship with Lacy in an article arguing that the painter's creative impulses were rooted in sexual pain and humiliation.

Richardson, who has written a multi-volume biography of Bacon, also claims that the painter pushed his more well-known lover George Dyer to suicide by goading him "into a state of psychic meltdown".

Dyer took his own life in a Paris hotel bathroom in 1971 – a tragedy that Bacon memorialised in Triptych, May-June 1973, which is considered one of his finest works.

In the article Richardson claims that Lacy and Dyer were crucial to Bacon's style because they provoked his sadomasochistic desires.

"Unfortunately, drink released a fiendish, sadistic streak in Lacy that bordered on the psychopathic," he writes in the New York Review of Books.

"In a state of alcoholic dementia, he hurled Bacon through a plate glass window. His face was so damaged that his right eye had to be sewn back into place.

"Bacon loved Lacy even more. For weeks he would not forgive Lucian Freud for remonstrating with his torturer. Mercifully, Lacy moved to Tangier."

Richardson also describes spending evenings with Bacon and Dyer in the 1960s during which the artist would taunt and bully his fragile partner.

"Bacon would goad George into a state of psychic meltdown and then, in the early hours of the morning – his favourite time to work – he would exorcise his guilt and rage and remorse in images of Dyer aimed, as he said, at the nervous system," he writes.

Richardson argues that the quality of Bacon's work declined after Dyer's death when he started a new, more stable relationship "seemingly free of sadomasochistic overtones" with a younger man called John Edwards.

While praising Bacon's more tortured works, Richardson contends that he had little artistic ability and struggled to draw complex objects such as hands. He dismisses some of his most renowned paintings – including his series of Popes – as "magnificent flukes".

Bacon, who died in 1992, is considered one of the greatest British painters of the 20th Century.

During his lifetime he earned a reputation as a dissolute libertine, heading a coterie of hard-drinking cronies including fellow painter Lucian Freud and journalist Jeffrey Bernard.

Old queens, Krays and champagne

John Richardson, The Observer, Sunday 22 November 2009

"In 1950, Bacon's studio would become the focus of attention for a three-day celebration that, in retrospect, was the coming-out party for a new variety of bohemia. In its excess it could also be seen as Bacon's debut as a star. The occasion was the wedding of his close friend Ann Dunn … Francis painted the chandeliers red to match his maquillage; an old queen belted out campy versions of popular songs. A woman known as 'Sod' (real name Edomy), who lived on a bus, helped to welcome the guests: these included members of parliament and fellows of All Souls, as well as 'rough trade,' slutty debutantes, cross-dressers, and the evil Kray brothers. The consumption of hundreds of cases of champagne would have left Francis broke had he not had the support of a rich and indulgent lover."

Extract from John Richardson's forthcoming piece in the New York Review of Books

Sado-masochism and stolen shoe polish: Bacon's legacy revisited

Art historian John Richardson's revelations on the troubled artist he knew as a young man

Charlotte Higgins, The Observer, 22 November, 2009

Francis Bacon’s was a life lived to extravagant extremes. His drunken excesses in the Colony Room Club in Soho; his carnivalesque, ruinous generosity; the formative occasion on which, as a teenager, his father found him wearing his mother's underwear and beat the living daylights out of him – all this is almost as celebrated as his riotously tortured paintings.

But now the art historian John Richardson, whose multi-volume life of Picasso has been called the best artist's biography ever written, and who knew Bacon from the 1940s, has argued that the best of Bacon's art stemmed precisely from his sadomasochistic sexual relationships at their most intense, which also led directly to the death of at least one of his lovers.

It was that early beating by his father to which Bacon attributed his taste for masochism – desires that were played out in adulthood with his lover Peter Lacy.

Richardson describes Lacy's "most heinous assault": "In a state of alcoholic dementia, he hurled Bacon through a plate glass window. His face was so damaged that his right eye had to be sewn back into place. Bacon loved Lacy even more. For weeks he would not forgive Lucian Freud for remonstrating with his torturer. Mercifully, Lacy moved to Tangier."

Writing in the forthcoming issue of the New York Review of Books, Richardson calls Lacy "a dashing 30-year-old … He owned an infamous cottage in the Thames valley, where Francis would spend much of his time – often, according to him, in bondage".

Richardson adds: "Unfortunately, drink released a fiendish, sadistic streak in Lacy that bordered on the psychopathic. Besides taking his rage out on Bacon, he took it out on his canvases. To his credit, however, he inspired some of his lover's most memorable works, among them, the Man in Blue paintings: a menacing, dark-suited Lacy set off against vertical draperies."

The best-known of Bacon's lovers is George Dyer – partly because Bacon immortalised in paintings Dyer's 1971 suicide in a hotel bedroom lavatory, on the eve of the artist's retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris.

Richardson describes the directness of the relationship between Bacon's desires and his artistic output. "Bacon would goad George into a state of psychic meltdown and then, in the early hours of the morning – his favourite time to work – he would exorcise his guilt and rage and remorse in images of Dyer aimed, as he said, at the nervous system." Richardson argues that these are among his best works.

Richardson describes the evening he spent in New York with the pair in 1968. After a lunch during which Bacon called Jackson Pollock an "old lace-maker" they went out drinking. Dyer left, after an argument, and in the early hours Richardson received a call from Bacon who had found his lover passed out on the floor of their room in the Algonquin hotel, "unconscious from having washed down a handful of his sleeping pills with a bottle of scotch".

According to Richardson: "The goading worsened, the imagery intensified," and finally, after another unsuccessful suicide attempt in Greece, Dyer killed himself in Paris.

Richardson argues that Bacon's art went rapidly downhill when, after Dyer's death, he entered a relationship with John Edwards, which was "seemingly free of sadomasochistic overtones. This may explain why Bacon's work lost its sting and failed to thrill. Paintings inspired by Edwards, as well as a Formula 1 driver and a famous cricketer the artist fancied (fetishism survives in the batting pads), reveal that in old age Bacon managed to banish his demons and move on to beefcake. His headless hunks of erectile tissue buffed to perfection have an angst-free, soft-porn glow".

Richardson is an unusually stern critic of Bacon – who was the subject of a Tate retrospective last year and is revered by such artists as Damien Hirst. The problem, argues Richardson, is that Bacon simply could not draw. " Painting after painting would be marred by his inability to articulate a figure or its space." The critic David Sylvester – who helped cement Bacon's reputation – let him off too lightly for this "fatal flaw", he argues. "His celebrated variants on Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X are either magnificent flukes or near-total disasters. In the earliest of this 10-year series, Bacon famously portrays the pope screaming. He's good at screams but hopeless at hands, so he amputates, conceals, or otherwise fudges them."

Richardson describes his first visit to Bacon's studio in the late 1940s. "Bacon struck me as being exhilaratingly funny … Everything about his vast, vaulted studio was over the top: martinis served in huge Waterford tumblers; a paint-stained garter belt kicked under a sofa … The ramshackle theatricality that permeated the studio also permeated the three iconic mastershockers – scrotum-bellied humanoids screaming out at us from the base of a crucifixion – that were about to make the artist famous."

The sight of Bacon's blind old nanny, Jessie Lightfoot, knitting in a corner "came as a surprise". She slept on the kitchen table, and "provided cover for Francis's shoplifting sprees (groceries, cosmetics, and Kiwi shoe polish for his hair)". She also helped provide an unusual source of income for Bacon: when the artist held illicit roulette parties, she would extort huge tips from visitors desperate to go to the loo. According to Richardson: "I remember Francis echoing his nanny: 'They should bring back hanging for buggery.' He was certainly not the only gay Englishman for whom guilt was intrinsic to sex."

Demons and beefcake 

the other side of Francis Bacon

Senior art historian John Richardson has now laid down his views and recollections of the artist

Charlotte Higgins, The Observer, Sunday, 22 November 2009

 Francis Bacon had his right eye sewn back in place after he was thrown through a window by lover Peter Lacy. Photograph: Jane Bown

The territories of  Francis Bacon’s soul have been explored widely; they have been the subject of a film, books and endless speculation. But the senior art historian John Richardson – who, at 85, is working on the last volume of his acclaimed biography of Picasso, and who knew Bacon from his 20s – has now laid down his views and recollections of Bacon, amounting to a reappraisal of his life and work.

Writing in the forthcoming issue of the New York Review of Books, Richardson argues that Bacon's sado-masochistic relationships lay at the heart of his best work, but with terrible consequences for his lover George Dyer, whose fragile mental state Richardson attributes to Bacon's endless "goading".

Having provoked Dyer into "a state of psychic meltdown" he "would exorcise his guilt and rage and remorse in images of Dyer aimed, as he said, at the nervous system". This "goading" resulted in Dyer's suicide, writes Richardson.

An earlier relationship, with Peter Lacy, was violent to the extent that "he hurled Bacon through a plate glass window. His face was so damaged that his right eye had to be sewn back into place".

Bacon's art went rapidly downhill when sado-masochism ceased to be a part of his life, argues Richardson, who describes the "angst-free, soft-porn glow" of his later work.

Richardson, who has hitherto held back from revealing his full memories of Bacon since the artist's death in 1992, also pours scorn on critics, such as the late David Sylvester, who attempted to defend the self-taught Bacon's "inability to draw". He calls the celebrated Screaming Popes series "either magnificent flukes or near-total disasters" and refers to Bacon's failure to convey "subjects that call for graphic skill, subjects, for instance, that include hands". Richardson also refers to Bacon's early adventures as a rent boy; his shoplifting, using his elderly nanny as an accomplice; and the vividly bohemian life around him, including a three-day party in 1950, whose guests "included members of parliament and fellows of All Souls, as well as 'rough trade', slutty debutantes, cross-dressers, and the notoriously evil Kray brothers".

Damien Hirst says anyone can be like Rembrandt. 

But does art world agree?

Tormented Caravaggio and Bacon connect in Rome show

By Ella Ide, Reuters, Thursday November 12, 2009

 Three Studies of Lucien Freud 1968/69 at the Galleria Borghese in Rome November 11, 2009.

ROME (Reuters) - Portraits by Italian master Caravaggio and Irish-born 20th-century painter Francis Bacon stand side-by-side in new exhibition connecting their tormented views of humanity despite contrasting approaches to realism.

The show at Rome's Galleria Borghese marks 400 years since Caravaggio's death and 100 years since Bacon's birth and at its heart lies their shared fascination with the human form and their predilection for the expressive portrait.

Both were radical for their times: against the distorted idealism of high mannerism, Caravaggio was driven by obsessive attention to the real, while Bacon was derided for his refusal to relinquish the human figure in favour of abstraction.

"Bacon can be compared to Caravaggio above all in terms of intensity," said art historian Michael Peppiatt, co-curator of the exhibition and Bacon's close friend and biographer.

Both painters have been seen as icons of gay, tormented genius and their tragic natures and lives marked by violence - Bacon's lover committed suicide and Caravaggio was condemned to death after killing a man - are echoed in their works.

"They were both conscious of the shortness of life and of the fragility of humanity, and each powerfully conveys this consciousness through his art," said Peppiatt in a statement.

Seventeen works by Bacon are featured alongside 14 paintings by Caravaggio, six of which, including the Madonna with the Serpent and the Sick Bacchus, belong to the Borghese's permanent collection.

Many of the works by Bacon, including Head VI, the result of his studies of Velazquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X, are on loan from London's Tate Gallery.

The lavish entrance to the Galleria Borghese is devoted to Bacon's triptychs, painted after the suicide of his lover George Dyer, with chilling scenes of distorted, semi-naked male figures whose life oozes from them to form flesh-coloured puddles.

The show runs until January 24, 2010 and has already attracted well over 67,000 visitors, with the record numbers forcing the Borghese to extend its open hours and increase the number of tickets available for the daily tours by 30 per cent.

A man walks next to a Francis Bacon painting and a Caravaggio painting during an exhibition at the Galleria Borghese in Rome November 11, 2009.

Roma, Galleria Borghese, fino al 24 gennaio 2010

Caravaggio–Bacon

di Francesca Mentella, Agora Magazine,  venerdì 6 novembre 2009

Caravaggio e Francis Bacon a confronto. L’insolita mostra, curata da Anna Coliva e Michael Peppiatt, prende spunto in occasione del IV centenario della morte del maestro lombardo (1571 – 1610) e dal centenario della nascita dell’artista inglese (1909-1992). L’esposizione, realizzata nell’ambito delle dieci grande mostre organizzate dalla Galleria Borghese, la cui collezione possiede sei fra i Caravaggio più importanti, propone un appassionante confronto fra le opere dei due maestri. Essa intende accostare due grandi protagonisti della storia della pittura, che sono tra gli interpreti più profondi e innovativi della rappresentazione della figura umana nella storia dell’arte occidentale.

Sia chiaro, questa mostra non vuole teorizzare dipendenze di Bacon da Caravaggio ma, al contrario, provocare suggestioni visive, evocando corrispondenze spontanee risultanti da accostamenti formali. “Gli accostamenti -precisa il Professor Maurizio Calvesi, uno dei massimi esperti di Caravaggio, autore del catalogo e storico dell’arte di chiara fama- sono sempre azzardati, perché ogni artista è diverso dall’altro. Però l’accoppiamento di queste due figure distanti nel tempo ma in qualche modo accomunate da un certo travaglio, da un realismo, che con Bacon poi diventa esasperato, è secondo me un’idea molto felice, un’ idea bellissima. Bacon non ha nulla di Caravaggio, non si è ispirato a Caravaggio, però se c’è un artista del nostro tempo che può essere equiparato a Caravaggio è proprio lui”.

Entrambi infatti sono personalità estreme, che hanno espresso nella pittura il tormento dell’esistenza con pari intensità e genialità inventiva. Nelle diversità delle loro poetiche, hanno penetrato la tragedia dell’esistenza non come drammaticità di una condizione astratta o come accidentalità di accadimenti in quanto personali o storici ma come sentimento interiore e imprescindibile dell’esistere, individuale ed intimo. Caravaggio esprime con la sua pittura l’ansia per la salvazione spirituale dell’uomo mentre Bacon il terrore verso l’ignoto che alberga dentro l’individuo: entrambi gli artisti infatti si sono calati nelle profondità psichiche che rendono sconosciute e misteriose le condizioni dell’esistenza umana.  

                                                                                          Three Studies of Lucien Freud 1968/69  Francis Bacon 

Ma questa mostra offre anche la possibilità di riconsiderare, finalmente, idee errate riguardo la biografia del Merisi. “Francis Bacon è realmente un artista maledetto, quello di Caravaggio pittore maledetto- spiega Calvesi- è più che altro un clichè che gli è stato attribuito in età moderna. Le cose scritte sul conto di Caravaggio, come il fatto che fosse iroso, assassino e miscredente, sono state scritte dai suoi biografi dell’epoca, ma se si pensa che il biografo di Caravaggio è il Baglione, suo nemico personale, si capisce il perché del malinteso. Questo senza dubbio nella nostra epoca funziona, ed ha contribuito al suo successo popolare mentre all’epoca di Caravaggio era motivo di condanna. Anche la sua presunta omosessualità è un mito- prosegue Calvesi- però nessuno mai cancellerà questa idea dalla testa dei registi e degli scrittori, perché è molto più affascinante parlare di lui in questi termini che non nei termini reali di uomo che aveva una tormentata religiosità borromaica, che a Roma gli costò una sorta di persecuzione. Quella di Caravaggio era un’epoca in cui c’era una fede religiosa viva, unanimemente condivisa dal pittore stesso. Caravaggio non era né ateo, né miscredente, era semplicemente un adepto della linea borromaica della controriforma cattolica, portata avanti prima da Carlo poi da Federico Borromeo”.

Caravaggio è intimamente legato alla storia della Galleria Borghese, luogo privilegiato per celebrare il quarto centenario dalla sua morte. A Scipione Borghese, infatti, erano destinati i due dipinti che recava con sé al momento della morte, ed è con il Cardinale che egli ebbe il rapporto più intenso e storicamente più ricco di conseguenze. La Galleria Borghese mantiene vive le tracce di questo rapporto attraverso sei capolavori, il Fanciullo con canestro di frutta, Bacchino malato, Madonna dei Palafrenieri, Davide con la testa di Golia, San Gerolamo scrivente e San Giovanni Battista, tramite i quali è possibile illustrare l’intero arco della sua vita.

Per questa occasione la collezione permanente della Galleria è arricchita da opere chiave della sua produzione come la Negazione di Pietro dal Metropolitan di New York, il Martirio di Sant’Orsola l’ultimo Caravaggio da Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano di Napoli, il Ritratto di Antonio Martelli, Cavaliere di Malta da Palazzo Pitti o la Resurrezione di Lazzaro dal Museo Regionale di Messina.

Alle opere di Caravaggio verranno quindi affiancati diciassette capolavori di Francis Bacon: i grandi trittici come Triptych August 1972 dalla Tate Gallery di Londra e Triptych inspired by the Orestia of Aeschylus dall’Astrup Fearnley Museum di Oslo, le sue immagini di papa Innocenzo X di Velazquez come Head VI dalla Arts Council Collection di Londra, i ritratti come Study for a portrait of George Dyer, Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne 1966 dalla Tate Gallery o Three studies of Lucian Freud.

Un esperimento ben riuscito, una mostra che ci consente di contemplare quanto di più interiore, sconvolgente e aberrante il pennello di questi artisti abbia incontrato nell’indagine profonda dell’animo umano.

INFO: Caravaggio-Bacon Roma, Galleria Borghese, Piazzale Scipione Borghese 5, dal 2 ottobre 2009 al 24 gennaio 2010. Orari: lunedì, dalle ore 13 alle 19; dal martedì al sabato, dalle ore 9 alle 21; domenica, dalle 9 alle 19. Ingresso: interi € 13,50 per mostra e Galleria Borghese, più diritto di prevendita la prenotazione è obbligatoria. Prenotazioni: tel. 06 32810 – www.ticketeria.it. Catalogo: 24 ORE Motta Cultura con marchio Federico Motta Editore

Francis Bacon: Zaživa legendou

Život, Dnes je Streda, 4.11. 2009, meniny má Karol

Svoj mladistvý výzor pripisoval rodinnej genetike. Nikdy totiž nebol striedmy.

Hoci sa narodil len pred sto rokmi, vo Veľkej Británii bol rešpektovaným pojmom už počas svojho života. Margaret Thatcherová ho raz opísala ako „muža, čo maľuje tie hnusné obrazy“. Hovorila o FRANCISOVI BACONOVI.

Anglický kapitán vo výslužbe Anthony Edward Mortimer Bacon sa do Írska presťahoval, lebo tam boli lepšie podmienky na chov a trénovanie koní, ktorým sa venoval. Francis, ktorý sa narodil 28. októbra 1909 v Dubline, bol druhý v poradí z jeho piatich detí.

Kapitán Bacon bol výbušný, agresívny typ a tak sa správal aj k synovi. Malý Francis chorý na chronickú astmu bol v jeho očiach nula. Ani jeho školské vzdelávanie nebolo úplne tradičné. Do školy ho poslali až v pätnástich. „Nemal som ju rád, preto som z nej pravidelne utekal. Nakoniec ma z nej rodičia odhlásili a strávil som tam iba rok,“ vysvetľoval neskôr. Navyše Francisa priťahovali muži. „Otca som nemal rád, ale keď som bol mladý, sexuálne ma priťahoval,“ spomínal neskôr Bacon otvorene. Ako tínedžer mal aférky s pomocníkmi v stajniach, a keď otec zistil, že je homosexuál, a pristihol ho, ako si skúša matkinu spodnú bielizeň, vyhodil ho v roku 1926 z domu.

Maliar samouk

Šestnásťročný Francis odišiel do Londýna. Žil zo dňa na deň zo štedrého vreckového od matky, privyrábal si drobnosťami a starší muži mu platili za sex. Cudzie mu neboli ani malé krádeže. Otec ho poslal na jar 1927 s jedným zo svojich prísnych známych do Berlína, aby sa z neho stal naozajstný chlap. Ibaže ten to využil na pomer s chlapcom. V Berlíne sa Francis zamotal do sexuálnych výstrelkov, gamblerstva a zaplietal sa s pochybnými existenciami. Umelcom sa rozhodol stať po tom, ako v roku 1927 videl výstavu Picassových kresieb. Začal kresbami a akvarelmi ako samouk, krátko žil v Paríži, potom opäť v Londýne, kde sa venoval interiérovému dizajnu. Učil sa maľovať olejom a prvýkrát vystavoval v roku 1930. K jeho podporovateľom vtedy patril vážený občan Eric Hall, ženatý muž, ktorý mal s Francisom intímny pomer viac ako 15 rokov.

Nepodarky ničil

Prvú naozaj originálnu prácu Ukrižovanie namaľoval Francis, keď mal dvadsaťtri, a dokonca mala hneď kupca. Nasledujúce roky sa mu až tak nedarilo, jeho práce sa nepredávali. Veľa sa ich nezachovalo, lebo veci, ktoré sa mu nepáčili, zničil. Robil to až do konca života.

Európu zasiahla druhá svetová vojna, ale Francis pre astmu na front nemohol ísť. Skúšal to aspoň v domobrane, ale jeho chorobu to zhoršilo. Presťahoval sa preto spolu s Ericom Hallom na vidiek. V tomto období veľa nemaľoval, ale ak, tak to stálo za to. Prelomom v jeho živote bol triptych Tri štúdie figúr pri základe ukrižovania (1944), ktorý vystavil v Londýne v apríli 1945. Okamžite pritiahol pozornosť kritikov i verejnosti. Kúpil ho jeho milenec Eric a neskôr ho venoval Tate Gallery v Londýne, kde visí dodnes.

Osudoví muži

Francisov ľúbostný život nebol jednoduchý. Po roku 1950 už s Ericom, ktorý opustil manželku, nežil. Niekedy pred rokom 1952 sa dal dokopy s bývalým stíhacím a testovacím pilotom Petrom Lacym. Ich vzťah bol plný deštrukcie a Bacon ostal v zajatí Petrovho neurotického sadizmu viac ako desaťročie. Keď sa jeho milenec presťahoval do Tangeru, Bacon ho nasledoval a žil medzi Marokom a Londýnom. Nakoniec sa rozišli, lebo Peter čoraz viac prepadal alkoholu.

Francisova umelecká reputácia medzitým rástla. Ďalším jeho prelomovým dielom bol veľkoformátový triptych Tri štúdie ukrižovania z roku 1962. Zrodil sa v ateliéri, ktorý vyzeral ako chaotické smetisko, ale inde maľovať nedokázal. „Namaľoval som ho asi za dva týždne, keď som mal mizernú pijanskú náladu a všetko bolo zahalené v opare alkoholu a neskutočnej opice. Niekoľkokrát som ani nevedel, čo vlastne robím. Je to však jediný obraz, ktorý som takto namaľoval. Možno práve to, že som nebol triezvy, mi pomohlo oslobodiť sa. Nikdy viac som to nezopakoval,“ priznal v jednom z rozhovorov.

V máji 1962 mu v londýnskej Tate Gallery urobili obrovskú retrospektívnu výstavu. V deň vernisáže dostal telegram, že jeho vtedy už bývalý partner Peter Lacy v Tangeri zomrel. Hlboko ho to zasiahlo.

Koncom nasledujúceho roka do jeho života vstúpil ďalší muž. George Dyer bol elegán z východného Londýna, mal na konte drobné prehrešky proti zákonu a navonok pôsobil tvrdo, čím ukrýval svoju depresívnu a neistú povahu. Stal sa námetom mnohých Baconových obrazov. Alkoholizmus, pokusy o samovraždu a nebezpečné fyzické potýčky s Francisom vzťahu nepridávali. V roku 1970 dokonca žiarlivý George ukryl v maliarovom ateliéri 2,1 gramu marihuany a udal ho.

O rok neskôr Bacona čakala ďalšia veľká retrospektíva, tentoraz v Paríži. História sa kruto zopakovala. Dva dni pred jej otvorením Dyera našli mŕtveho. Zomrel na predávkovanie liekmi v kombinácii s alkoholom. Francis prijal túto správu so zvláštnym pokojom. Až séria obrazov, ktoré namaľoval v priebehu nasledujúcich rokov, ukázala, aký hlboký bol jeho smútok.

Skutočný priateľ

V polovici sedemdesiatych rokov stretol ďalšieho muža z East Endu – Johna Edwardsa. Zoznámili sa v maliarovom obľúbenom bare Colony Room v Soho, kam chodil viac ako štyridsať rokov. Edwards mal dvadsaťšesť, Bacon o štyridsať rokov viac. Klebety o tom, že títo dvaja muži boli nielen priateľmi, ale aj milencami, sa nikdy nepotvrdili. Skôr bol medzi nimi podobný vzťah ako medzi otcom a synom a maliar tvrdil, že John je „jediný skutočný priateľ, ktorého kedy mal“. Edwards bol skutočne charizmatický. Aj napriek tomu, že bol ťažký dyslektik a len veľmi ťažko dokázal čítať či písať. Spolu cestovali na dovolenky či na výstavy, chodili po reštauráciách, kasínach a do barov a John často pomáhal Francisovi zo situácií, do ktorých sa dostal, keď si vypil. Vtedy vedel byť inak veľkodušný muž veľmi prchký a vzťahovačný.

Nasledujúcich pätnásť rokov mal maliar výstavy po celom svete. V roku 1985 mu londýnska Tate Gallery urobila ďalšiu retrospektívu a označila ho za „najväčšieho žijúceho maliara“.

Vášeň do posledného dychu

Francis síce nebol Johnov milenec, ale vášne a sexu sa ani v pokročilom veku a pri zhoršenom zdraví nevzdal. V roku 1989 mu vyoperovali obličku napadnutú rakovinou, ale aj tak udržiaval vzťah s mladým Španielom. Napriek radám svojho lekára za ním v apríli 1992 odcestoval do Madridu, kde ho krátko po príchode museli hospitalizovať. Dvadsiateho ôsmeho apríla dostal infarkt a zomrel. Podľa želania ho bez obradu spopolnili ešte v Španielsku a jeho popol potom pri súkromnom obrade rozprášili v Anglicku. Za univerzálneho dediča ustanovil svojho najlepšieho priateľa - Johna Edwardsa. Ten v roku 1998 daroval galérii v Dubline Baconov ateliér, kde tvoril viac ako tridsať rokov, a po rekonštrukcii ho pre verejnosť otvorili v máji 2001.

Ako tvoril

V Baconovom ateliéri neboli na stenách žiadne obrazy, iba pár fotografií. „Nemôžem žiť s obrazmi,“ vravieval. Steny používal ako skúšobnú paletu a jeho ateliér bol skutočným smetiskom. Zaschnuté tuby farieb, koberce, handry, staré štetce a kopa prachu. „Raz som si kúpil skvelý ateliér, s perfektným svetlom, a tak nádherne som ho všetkým vybavil, že som tam nedokázal pracovať. Bol som v tom priestore úplne vykastrovaný,“ tvrdil maliar. Hoci sú mnohé jeho obrazy netradičnými portrétmi, nikdy nemaľoval podľa živého modelu. V ateliéri bol najradšej sám a inšpiroval sa hlavne fotografiami. Svet fotografie ho fascinoval. Ako dobre predávaný autor mohol žiť kdekoľvek v Londýne, a aj si kúpil krásne bývanie pri Temži, ale nedokázal tam existovať. Preto žil v starom byte a bizarnom ateliéri.

Priatelia ho poznali hlavne ako veľmi štedrého, inteligentného a zraniteľného človeka. Aj napriek veľmi znepokojujúcim obrazom bol Bacon príjemný človek a skutočný džentlmen. Veľmi nerád analyzoval vlastné diela. „Ak o tom dokážete hovoriť, prečo to potom maľovať?“ bola jedna z jeho obľúbených odpovedí. „Nemôžete byť horší a šokujúcejší než sám život,“ rád hovoril, hoci jeho obrazy ľudí väčšinou odpudzovali. Práve preto si ich súkromní zberatelia veľmi nekupovali a končili skôr v zbierkach galérií. Jeden z jeho priateľov, básnik Stephen Spender, to vystihol veľmi jasne: „Chcel som si kúpiť jeho obraz, ale nikto z mojej rodiny u nás doma žiadny vidieť nechcel.“ Bacon rád tvrdil, že maľuje sám pre seba: „Neverím, že moje maľby sú pre ľudí. Môžem maľovať iba pre seba,“ a dodával: „Keby som myslel na to, čo povedia kritici, nemaľoval by som.“

TEXT: ZUZANA MEZENCEVOVÁ
FOTO: PROFIMEDIA.SK, ISIFA.COM,

Zdroj: Život

Bacon comes alive in an Indian setting

Sharmishta Koushik, The Times of India, 2 November 2009

BACON'S MAN WITH FIGURE OF PARAPLEGIC CHILD         BACON'S MAN WITH THE FIGURE OF THE PRIEST

                                               Size 5' x 5' (2 parts) Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, 2005,  Yusuf Arakkal

BANGALORE: Francis Bacon is considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, alongside Pablo Picasso. And in his centenary year, a group of Bangalore artists pay homage to him with an art exhibition The Open Cage, Curated by Giridhar Khasniss, it features works by artists Yusuf Arakkal, C F John, B Devaraj and M S Prakash Babu.

"He's an iconic figure of the 20th century. I was researching him for an article early this year. It's also his birth centenary year. That interested me. As I went along, I thought, why not have a group of Indian artists from Bangalore pay homage to him through their works. I broached this idea to Yusuf Arakkal. He warmed to it, and also agreed to lend his work,'' says Khasnis.

The painting in question is a diptych - Bacon's Man and Child and Bacon's Man and Priest, which incidentally, won the gold medal at the Florence International Biennale in 2005.

As for the other artists, Khasnis wanted a small group of just four. The figures in Bacon's works are characterized by a sense of despair and loneliness. And Khasnis developed a vision for the show. "I felt the paintings shouldn't copy Bacon's works, but rather inspire artists to render them in an Indian way,'' says Khasnis. That brought up his first challenge of choosing artists who could draw from this vision. Eventually, he zeroed in on B Devaraj, C F John and M S Prakash Babu, in addition to Yusuf Arakkal.

"Devaraj's works have stark images, but are also meditative. His figures are calm, collected, but the environment around is harsh and violent. Prakash Babu is also a film-maker, and Bacon wanted to be one too. He was inspired by the film Battleship Potamkin by Sergei Eisenstein, and one of his paintings was inspired by a particular scene on the Odessa steps, of a wounded nurse. Yusuf Arakkal's paintings are also stark, but have a humanist quality to them,'' he says. To counterbalance these sensibilities, he wanted a gentle rendering of struggle.

"C F John came to mind for his works are gentle and, yet, as powerful as Devaraj's paintings,'' he says.

Six months of discussions led to 27 paintings that comprise The Open Cage. The cage is a Baconian concept. It connotes a sense of being enclosed and crumpled. But Khasnis wanted to bring in a positive element. And hence, The Open Cage. "It's a paradox. Although it's a cage, there is a sense of something opening up, that there is a possibility of freedom,'' he says.

The works depict not just different approaches, but are also of different sizes. There are some diptychs and triptychs, which, says Khasnis, are also part of the Baconian process.

The exhibition opens tomorrow at Galerie Sara Arakkal, and is on till November 14 from 11 am to 6 pm.

Tribute to Bacon

Considered to be among the most powerful artists of the 20th century, Francis Bacon (1909-1992), the Irish-born British painter, became a legend in his own lifetime.

Deccan Herald, Monday 2 November 2009

His prolific output included many compelling, mysterious and violent paintings. Shockingly and chillingly distorting the human body and placing it in mysteriously seductive cots, brutal chairs, or boxlike enclosures, Bacon created a unique visual universe where human emotions and passions were embedded within the harsh realities of the flesh.

The Open Cage curated by art writer Giridhar Khasnis and featuring four Bangalore-based artists Yusuf Arakkal, C F John, B Devaraj and M S Prakash Babu, who pay homage to the art and life of Francis Bacon, by revisiting his paintings and interpreting them.

Yusuf Arakkal’s award-winning painting Bacon’s Man, Priest and Boy which received the Gold Medal at the prestigious Florence International Biennale 2005, is a five-feet-by-ten-feet diptych rendered principally in monochromatic hues and takes a cue from Bacon’s well-known painting, Self-Portrait (1973) showing a man seated on a chair.

H.R. Giger: Father of the alien

On the 30th anniversary of his most famous creation, the artist behind the creature is still annoyed at how he was treated by Hollywood

Wolfgang Dios, Weekend Post, Friday, October 30, 2009

                                                                      Alien 1979

Three decades ago, a loathsome, worm-like parasite burst from the chest of a hapless spaceship crew member - an electrifying moment that made cinematic history, as well as the reputations of pretty well everyone concerned. Sigourney Weaver, playing beleaguered Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley, had previously best been known for a minor role in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, and director Ridley Scott for his work in British television commercials.

The creature was designed by Swiss artist H.R. Giger based on the nightmarish creature that had appeared in his then just-published art book, Necronomicon (Masks Of The Dead), which director Scott had seen. Together the two conferred on what the parasite should look like when it erupted from its human host's body. Giger readily admits he was influenced by another artist. ‘It was Francis Bacon's work that gave me the inspiration,’ Giger said, ‘Of how this thing would come tearing out of the man's flesh with its gaping mouth, grasping and with an explosion of teeth ... it's pure Bacon.’

Francis Bacon / Diego Velázquez /  “Alien”

REF. Museum of References, October 10, 2009

What does a 17th century pope an the “Alien” film series have in common?

In 1650, Spanish court painter Diego Velázquez made a portrait of then pope, Innocent X. The painting is considered by many art critics as one, if not the, best portrait ever made. Apparently, Irish painter Francis Bacon, shared this view. Between the mid 1950’s and early 1960’s he created dozens of variations of the portrait (Study After Velázquez). Bacon’s  unique style transformed Velázquez already intense portrait into an horrific, nightmarish image.

HQ Visits... The Bacon Report

By Sue Conley, Herald Ireland, Thursday October 29 2009

It's the centenary of Francis Bacon's birth, and one feels obliged to write about it. But when one looks - or I look, if you're going to be casual about it - at a body of work only to go, "Ugh" ... well, one wonders what the hell one is going to come up with.

If you write about a certain subject for a living, you can't always like everything that you write about - but there is something so unappealing about Bacon's work that it created quite a dilemma. He is deemed too important by the powers-that-be to fob off with a mention at the bottom of the arts pages. So, what's a girl reporter to do?

She can start with the truth: I don't like the work of Francis Bacon. It is revolting, violent, not only grotesque but gross; it is frightening and nightmarish. It's emotional terrorism, like being forced to watch torture, as the bulk of his imagery is either all screaming popes or carcasses of cows, or distortions of the human figure so subtle that it takes a while to figure out what is so disturbing.

However ... there's got to be something fairly powerful going on to provoke such a reaction. So, rather than just react all over the place and settle into my off-put opinion, I decided to let someone try to convince me otherwise. I hied myself to the Hugh Lane Gallery, which has mounted A Terrible Beauty, marking Bacon's 100th birthday with a presentation of objects and research materials from the gallery's extensive Bacon archive; once there, I just about dared one of the curators, Padraic Moore, to convince me of the merits of an artist whose work I disliked so thoroughly.

To his great credit, he didn't blink an eye when I told him of my aversion. "When you approach the later paintings," he agreed, "they have all the qualities that you were talking about, this visceral, aggressive, violent, even frightening energy. And they're not necessarily aesthetically pleasing." Ha! I knew I was right!

Moore continues: "But they have a function, and I think that function is to provoke. It's important to contextualise where he was coming from."

The context is illuminating. Born in Dublin to a British military family, Bacon Senior was horsey, and it was his equine capabilities that brought the family to Ireland. They returned to London during the First World War, and then moved back to Ireland for our own Civil War. Not restful times in which to grow up.

Bacon Junior was asthmatic, and arty; at 16 he was ejected from the family home when Dad found him dressed up in Mum's clothes. He went to London and, with some education here and there, and no formal art training at all, took up life as an artist.

What a time to have lived. Two world wars, the atomic age ... "I think he was really only reflecting what he was bombarded with," says Moore, and I have to agree. I'm starting to understand something about the psyche of Francis.

Then there's how his lover, George Dyer, died of an overdose the night before the opening of Bacon's first retrospective in the Grand Palais in Paris. The gallery's archive yields several photographs of Bacon attending the showing despite his grief, although in one image clearly shows the devastation Dyer's death has wrought.

Oh, dear. He's becoming human. "The work is very human," Moore insists. "And humanity is violent, and it is sexual, and it is about suffering and vulnerability and isolation."

Oh. Yes. That's true. It's not all water lilies and Madonnas and child and dogs playing poker, is it?

Now I begin to question what it is I look for in an artwork. Am I happy enough with impressionistic light upon the water, or am I up for a challenge? Moore takes me for a tour of the exhibition, and he points out some of the things that he values in the paintings: the formal structure, the palette of luscious colours, the recurring body language of the figures.

There's a portrait of Francis' last lover, John Edwards, from 1988: the figure sits on a cane chair in his underpants, against a black and olive background. It's simple, it's direct, and it echoes, painfully, mournfully, many of the portraits that Bacon did of Dyer. "Something that's left out of the reading of his work is love, and affection, and the suffering that this causes," says Moore.

"If you are the sort of person who is attached to people, as soon as you make the decision to attach yourself to another human being, you are instantly vulnerable, and there's the potential for suffering."

I feel my heart creak open, just a crack, to allow in comprehension of the sadness of the artist. And then I get freaked out by the shadow of Edwards that Bacon has painted in the foreground: it is flesh coloured.

I have no idea why that freaks me out, but it does - all the way. It is just plain nasty. And yet I've learned a lot about the man, and I've allowed myself to take in his work, so I'm not totally repulsed.

Bacon may not make my lifetime hit parade of favourite artists, but getting glimpse of his work process, through the gallery's presentation of its archival materials, has humanised him. I don't hate his work any more, and I can appreciate its power to push buttons and evoke tumultuous emotions.

It is, after all, only paint on canvas - but in the right hands, paint on fabric becomes explosive, and disconcerting, which says everything about the power of art. And the most powerful art is often the least lovely. But don't ask me to appreciate that Italian dude who put his own excrement in tins and sold it for buckets of money. I've got to draw the line somewhere. HQ

Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty, runs 'til March 2010 at the Hugh Lane Gallery, see www.hughlane.ie for more information

- Sue Conley  

Artist's anniversary marked

AN EXHIBITION marking the 100th anniversary of artist Francis Bacon’s birth opened at the Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, yesterday evening, writes AIDAN DUNNE

Aidan Dunne, The Irish Times, Thursday, October 29, 2009

Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty puts on display many of the contents of Francis Bacon’s studio, which the gallery received in 1998.

Opening the exhibition, President McAleese paid tribute to Hugh Lane director Barbara Dawson, her staff and Brian Clarke, the executor of the artist’s estate.

“They deserve a big thank you for bringing this man home,” she said, describing Bacon as “the defining figure in Irish visual art generally and one of the greatest of the 20th century”.

Commenting on the famous messiness of Bacon’s studio, the President said he was lucky he had never had to receive a presidential visit there because, as her daughter had told her after an official visit to her school: “A visit from the President is like having your mother visit your bedroom, so a visit to Bacon’s studio would clearly have been a disaster for everyone concerned.”  

Brian Clarke also commented on the studio’s state of disorder. He first visited it late at night, when the artist was still alive and without his knowledge. “It was,” he said, “both exhilarating and repulsive.”

Clarke and the late John Edwards, Bacon’s heir, gave the studio to the Hugh Lane, who sent in an archaeological team to survey and catalogue it. It inventoried more than 7,000 items, all of which were shipped to Dublin. The recreated studio can be seen in the Hugh Lane now.

Also on view is a selection of Bacon’s paintings, many of them only rarely exhibited in public before, including a picture from Damien Hirst’s personal collection. The studio contents, including unfinished and partially destroyed canvases, sketches, photographic prints and photographic reproductions in books and magazine, has been a treasure trove for scholars of the artist’s work.  

Joanna Shepard, Head of Conservation: Francis Bacon : A Terrible Beauty

RTE star apologises for African 'rats' gaffe

By Louise Hoganm, Irish Independent, Wednesday October 28 2009

                             Peter Beard  Self Portrait 1970s  Collection Hugh Lane 

AN RTE radio presenter issued an on-air apology yesterday after a guest referred to Africans as "reproducing like rats".

The Today with Pat Kenny show received complaints from listeners after the comment was made during a discussion with photographer Peter Beard on an exhibition celebrating the works of artist Francis Bacon.

Presenter Myles Dungan, standing in for Mr Kenny, later apologised as he read out remarks from disgruntled listeners. Mr. Dungan said the comment was "something that should not have been said".

Mr Beard, a friend of Bacon, was discussing the problems of overpopulation in Africa when the comment was made.

"You get this kind of crop damage because Africans are reproducing like rats and going right up to the border," said the photographer, who lives for part of the year in Kenya.

A spokeswoman for the Immigrant Council of Ireland described the comment as both "offensive and inappropriate".

Malerei

Die Schönheit des Schreckens

Gewalt und Leidenschaft, Rausch und Reflexion: zum 100. Geburtstag des Malers Francis Bacon

Zeit Online, 28. Oktober 2009

                      Francis Bacon in London, 1970

Francis Bacon – Suff, Sadomaso und Kreuzigungen

Von Tim Ackermann, Welt Online, 28. Oktober 2009

Er war Masochist, Chaot, Spieler, und mit seinen Lebensgefährten führte er zerstörerische Beziehungen. Dennoch hat kaum ein Künstler in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten den Kunstmarkt so dominiert wie Francis Bacon (1909-1992). Seine Werke kosten Millionen, und sein Einfluss ist noch immer enorm.

"Die Menschen sterben um mich herum, wie die Fliegen", sagte Francis Bacon 1975. "Es ist niemand mehr übrig geblieben, den ich malen könnte, außer mir selbst." Fünf Jahre später porträtierte sich der Maler mit einer Physiognomie wie durchgekneteter Hefeteig.

Die Farbe strich er teilweise mit Bürsten oder Lappen auf die Leinwand. Die Gesichtszüge sind dadurch ins leicht Abstrakte verrutscht. Es hat ein wenig den Anschein, als habe sich der Künstler bei den Tafeln von Three Studies for a Self Portrait in sein eigenes Antlitz hineingegraben. Ganz so, als habe er gehofft, dort zwischen den Knochen etwas Wichtiges zu finden.

Francis Bacon, der Maler der seelischen Pein und des Schmerzes, wäre jetzt 100 Jahre alt geworden. Neben William Turner gehört er heute zu den bekanntesten britischen Künstlern. Seine großen Triptychen werden - auch durch ein gesteigertes Interesse am Auktionsmarkt in den vergangenen Jahren - zu hohen zweistelligen Millionenpreisen versteigert.

Für die zeitgenössische Kunst scheint er so relevant wie nie zuvor. Bacon selbst hätte es wohl besonders gefallen, mitzuerleben, wie er beim Publikum populärer wurde als sein Landsmann und Erzfeind David Hockney. Gegenüber der Sorglosigkeit von Hockneys Pop-Art empfand der Maler stets einen erklärten Abscheu.

"Jedes Mal wenn ich Hockney erwähnte, ging Francis fast mit Fäusten auf mich los", sagt der Bacon-Biograf Michael Peppiatt. Kein Wunder: Schließlich drehte sich seine eigene Kunst ganz um das Gefühl des Verlustes.

100 Jahre Francis Bacon

Im Namen des Fleisches

Religion, sagt Francis Bacon, ist für ihn kein Thema. Schwer zu glauben angesichts all der Päpste, Kreuzigungen und Höllenvisionen in seinem Werk. Bacon ist anders. Sein Vater verzeiht ihm das nicht, er selbst noch weniger. Ein Trauma, dem wir einige der verstörendsten Bilder des 20. Jahrhunderts verdanken.

Von Susanne Lorenz

BR online, Bayerischer Rundfunk, 28.10.09

                                     Francis Bacon 1972 in seinem Atelier

In Bacons Bildern kauern Menschen wie Klumpen rohen Fleisches am Boden oder auf Betten, gehäutet und blutig. Oder sie hängen wie Rinderhälften in bizarren Kreuzigungsposen in einem Zimmer. Wesen, die weder Mensch noch Tier ähneln, reißen ihre Mäuler auf und entblößen zu viele Zähne. Er malt schreiende Päpste, verzerrt die Gesichter seiner Freunde und setzt seine Figuren in beengte Räume und Käfige.

Bilder wie Monster aus der Tiefe

Viele seiner Bildideen verdankt Bacon den Surrealisten. Sein Unterbewusstsein nennt er einen "Pool", aus dem die Bilder wie Tiefseemonster auftauchen. Eines dieser Monster ist der Papst - für Bacon ein Symbol der Tyrannei, das er immer wieder demontiert. Wobei es Bacon weniger um den Papst als Stellvertreter Christi geht als vielmehr um die Vaterfigur, die "Il Papa" verkörpert. Bacon ist Atheist; der Papst spielt als solcher in seinem Leben keine Rolle. Wohl aber sein eigener Vater, ein prügelnder Tyrann, der seine Kindheit und Jugend stärker prägt als Bacon später zugeben will.

Das schmerzvolle Anderssein des Francis Bacon

Bacons Vater trainiert in Irland Rennpferde, strotzt vor Männlichkeit und bevorzugt Bacons Bruder Edward. Nach Edwards frühem Tod soll Francis in dessen Rolle schlüpfen. Der Vater setzt ihn aufs Pferd, obwohl der asthmakranke Junge wegen der Tierhaare fast erstickt und sie die Ausritte jedes Mal abbrechen müssen. Enttäuscht von seinem schwächlichen Sohn, lässt er ihn von den Stallburschen auspeitschen. Da sich Bacon zu den Männern körperlich hingezogen fühlt, beschämt ihn diese Bestrafung noch mehr. Der Teenager weiß, dass er "anders" ist. Er spürt auch, dass es "falsch" ist, den eigenen Vater erotisch anziehend zu finden. Zum Eklat kommt es aber erst, als der Vater den Sohn in der Unterwäsche der Mutter erwischt. Er will Bacon nicht mehr sehen. Der 16-Jährige geht nach London.

Malen, was ihn erregt: Gewalt

Zeitlebens besteht Bacon darauf, dass die Verzerrungen in seinen Gemälden völlig natürlich seien. Er sagt, dass seine Bilder keine Geschichten erzählen. Er male lediglich, was ihn errege. Das stimmt auch: Gewalt erregt ihn mehr als alles andere. Seine Vorliebe für sadomasochistische Praktiken ist kein Geheimnis. Bacon sucht sich Partner, die ihm körperlich überlegen sind, ihn grün und blau schlagen. Oft humpelt er mit blutiger Nase durch das nächtliche London auf der Suche nach einer offenen Bar. Auch wenn sich Bacons Bilder nicht in jedem Detail erklären lassen, erzählen sie sehr wohl vom komplexen Gefühlsleben des Künstlers, der sich lebenslang für seine Homosexualität schämt, sich schuldig fühlt und nach Strafe verlangt.

Der Maler der Deformation

Vor 100 Jahren wurde Francis Bacon geboren

Von Anette Schneider, Deutschland Radio, 20.09.2009