Francis Bacon [Paperback]

Matthew Gale (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2008

Along with JMW Turner, Francis Bacon (1909-92) is regarded internationally as Britain's greatest painter. Drawing on low-art sources, including photographs torn from magazines and imagery from films, coupled with a keen awareness of the rich historical tradition of painting stretching back to the renaissance, he developed a way of portraying the human body that was unique in the history of painting. Beginning his public career in 1944 with Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion he depicted human beings usually in isolation, at moments of extreme tension or even pain, distorted like figures from a nightmare fantasy."I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them", he once said, "like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and memory trace of past events as the snail leaves its slime". For many contemporary critics, Bacon's bleakly existential outlook, coupled with his flamboyant homosexuality and colourful private life, made him a controversial figure. Nevertheless his mastery of the medium of paint by this self-taught artist was recognised relatively early, and in 1962 he had a retrospective exhibition at Tate. In 1985, on the occasion of another exhibition, the then Director of Tate remarked that Bacon was surely "the greatest living painter; no artist in our century has presented the human predicament with such insight and feeling".Towards the end of the first decade of a new century it is time to re-assess the achievement of this unique artist, whose style was so personal and distinctive that his influence lay more in his commitment to art itself than in any stylistic legacy. Can a painter still be seen as vital in the digital age? Do Bacon's tortured, despairing figures still speak to the human condition? It might be that for the contemporary viewer, Bacon's imagery appears to have foreshadowed the scenes that have filled our newspapers and television screens in recent years. Leading expert on international modern art Matthew Gale and renowned expert on British art Chris Stephens are joined by other international critics in a radical reassessment of Bacon's position for the twenty-first century.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Matthew Gale, curator of modern art at the Tate Modern, is a leading authority on the international avant-garde. Chris Stephens, curator of modern British art at the Tate Britain, is a renowned expert on British art. Francis Bacon was born in 1909, in Dublin. He was one of the most individual and powerful artists who arose out of the period following World War II. He died in 1992 in Madrid. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Tate Gallery Publishing (September 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1854377388
• ISBN-13: 978-1854377388
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 9.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,802,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A great artist, an average (sometimes pretentious) book, October 3, 2008

By 

Claude Reich (Florianopolis, Brazil and Paris, France) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Francis Bacon (Paperback)

This is the catalogue for the current exhibition held at the Tate gallery in London (the first major retrospective on the artist in England since 1985) and which will later go to the Prado in Madrid and the Met in NYC.

The book starts with six essays that, in a way, sum up everything that has been written or said about Bacon over the past fifty years.

The first, entitled "On the margin of the impossible", attempts to show how Bacon's ambition (which was to finish either "at the National Gallery or in the dustbin") and creative process (towards paintings that are neither abstract nor figurative, but hover between both forms of art to reach a new, deeper reality than that of the mere representational figure)make him difficult to pigeonhole in a classical history of movements in modern art.

The second essay dwells on the artist's critical reception during and after his lifetime and shows how European critics were quick to grasp the importance of the artist whereas Americans were much slower (Bacon's reputation in the US only started to grow in the 1960's, even though the Moma had been the first museum to buy one of his paintings in 1946). Over the years, the names of John Russell, David Sylvester, Michel Leiris, Gilles Deleuze and Michael Peppiatt stand out as major proponents of Bacon's art.

The third essay studies Bacon's paintings as such, emphasizing the problems of interpretation, explaining their sources and stressing the importance of chance in the creative process (what Deleuze and Bacon himself used to call "the accident", a term also present in the art of photography, so important to Bacon).

The fourth essay dwells on the importance of film (whether documentary or fiction)in Bacon's work.

The fifth essay studies the importance of male and physique magazines as inspirational material and, in this respect, draws a comparison between Bacon's and Keith Vaughan's art, both artists (without knowing each other personally)revealing - according to the author of this essay - many common traits (notably in the relationships they had with their respective lovers).

The last essay specifically deals with Bacon's iconography, the sources and references that abound in all his paintings, most of them discovered in his studio at the time of his death and which have prompted a complete reassessment of his work.

After this somewhat cumbersome start comes the catalogue itself, divided into eight themes (like "crucifixion", "portrait", "zone", "crisis", "late", etc)each one gathering a group of paintings around it.

On the whole, this book is sometimes interesting to read (and sometimes less so, especially in the fifth essay which does not add anything to the literature on the artist: comparing somewhat pompously Bacon to a minor British artist whose only real point in common with him was his homosexuality ...)but disappointing as far as the quality of the reproductions is concerned, with very few close-ups of details.

I own more than a dozen books on Bacon and this one qualifies as average, both for the text and the reproductions.

4.0 out of 5 stars NO fat Bacon, August 11, 2009

By 

E. Kessler "shopper" (ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Francis Bacon (Hardcover)

the Francis Bacon book edited by Gale and Stephens is full of insights, images and information I didn't know about Francis Bacon. The text is well organized and recommended for the beginning seeking knowledge about Bacon. The Book makes Bacon accessible to non-art historians and enough insider for art groupies.