Customer Reviews

Francis Bacon

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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.

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.