Biographical Information
Irish-born British figurative painter Francis Bacon was born on 28 October, 1909. Francis was born in old Georgian Dublin at 63 Lower Baggot Street. He was son to Captain Anthony Edward Bacon the father and mother Christina Winifred Firth. On 28 April 1992, Francis Bacon died of a heart attack while holidaying in Madrid. He was admitted at a private clinic, Handmaids of Maria where his chronic asthmatic condition morphed into a more serious respiratory condition. A condition that burdened him with speech and breathing difficulties. His lifetime was interesting as many would profess from his kind of artwork.
Francis was a figurative artist who mainly delved in the art of painting. Although not renaissance, his work leaned towards contemporary art influenced by earlier contemporary artists, Bacon’s work seemed to assimilate the kind of influences he had in life. His main influence mainly revolved around painting, film, photography, modern literary (poems), and Greek mythology (Arya, R. 2009, p. 144). Bacon’s main medium for painting was oil paints although he would sometimes use pastels in his oil paintings. It is only during his later years that he tried to incorporate more modern mediums like acrylic, spray paints and other forms of synthetic media.
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Bacon’s mode of art was mainly expressionism where in a cheeky sense he liked to capture human emotion. In the Journal for Cultural Research titled Remaking the Body: The Cultural Dimensions of Bacon, Arya depicts Bacon as being one of the best social commentators who recorded human behavior whilst articulating his own idiosyncratic bravura. is greatly influenced by Pablo Picasso especially in some of his first works like Crucifixion which he based on Picasso’s The Three Dancers . His first works were not well received. In fact, I could concur that they were disillusioned. The way his art was received made Bacon abandon painting for almost a decade. The nature also prompted him to suppress most of his earlier works. During this period Bacon had not mastered the art of expressionism as conjured by Picasso his influencer. Expressionism is a modernist movement that originated from Germany in early 20 th century. It was mainly meant for the art of painting and poetry but has since been witnessed in other art forms. Expressionism presents the world from a subjective point of view with the objective of evoking moods by radically distorting images for emotional effect. It concurs with the notion that Bacon invested his art with the power to communicate truth in the age that one lives. To explain why expressionism was to spark emotion and ideas, Bacon asked why after great artists did their greatest did people still to do more. Bacon states that it is because instincts change with different generations even after a previous artist has done great (Sylvester 1993, p. 59).
Interestingly, the artist’s early life was characterized by a lot of movement. He lived through the First World War while his father fought the Boar War in Australia. This characterized his life as one that would be filled with movement. The family’s movement was mostly between Britain and Ireland. As a child, Bacon grew up with a nanny who was his main mother figure. The nanny would later play a vital role in helping him setup in John Everett Millais house and studio. As Bacon grew up, he lost touch with his father due to his quire tendencies. loved to dress up as a woman and his father hated it. At one point, Bacon told his father that he was drawn to him drifting their relationship even further. As a young man he depended on a trust setup by his mother but it was not enough. Steeling and conning become a sustainable way to make ends meet. Even after trying formal work he got fired and this finally led him to the finer places to target rich men to take advantage of. After London he went to Berlin for two years then Paris where he finally got inspiration to paint again. In Paris, the artist visited various art galleries where he would gain confidence to embark on painting. Given his life journey and experiences, I would allude to the fact that Bacon was well equipped as a self-taught artist for expressionism.
Bacon was revered for his works and quotes. His quotes were often controversial depicting the nature of his paintings. One of his greatest quotes was “I think that man now realizes that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being, that he has to play out the game without reason.” He said this during an interview with Davis Sylvester for the British Broadcasting Corporation in October 1962. Bacons quote was in the context of Velázquez’s composition of a court recording. He explained that Velázquez to the best of his ability captured the events of that day. However, things have changed since for instance, events can be captured using photographs. A sense that has altered figurative painting in a positive way because now man realizes that they are an accident and they are also futile. A positive outcome that makes them work harder in the form of figurative art.
Artist Comparison
Picasso was Bacon’s major influencer after he saw some of his works in a Paris art gallery. Picasso’s work is what leads Bacon to go back to painting. The work of both the artists was similar. They were both visual magpies who often said that they looked at everything. It means that they both borrowed from the likes of Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Poussin and did not stop there. They also stretched to newspaper cuttings and popular culture icons. Bacon also solicited influence from Vincent van Gogh. Both Gogh and Picasso used distorted images to show expressionism and emotions. However, Bacon’s work was different from Gogh. His did not display the bright colors depicted on Vincent’s work. Vincent’s work was also visible of brush strokes almost to see the construct of his compositions but Bacon’s was somehow vivid and violent.
Critiques
When beginning his career and doing his version of Velázquez’s Crucifixion, it came as a con because what he produced looked nothing like the original. Bacon may justify himself by arguing that great artists’ work needs to develop with new generations. It portrays the urge of wanting to reinvent what great masters have done. Crucifixion was a vivid attempt to illustrate what Velázquez had portrayed. He used his version to indicate the prevalence of violence in the society he lived in. However, it is not the kind of violence that is taken literally, but the kind of violence that appears everywhere in his figures. This is to reduce the human into an animal as with violence man reduces to animals because man normally resorts to instinctual responses. It is possible to notice the interchangeability of man to animal in Bacon’s work with no boundaries between the two (Ades 1985, p. 14). However, his first breakthrough came when he did a three-part series of the crucifixion on the Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. The piece fails to mask the horrors of the cross as a weapon of torture and that is what Bacon wants. To show the naked truth that there is inhuman nature and elements that are evil (Russell 1993, p. 10). Bacon argued that we have become unnatural and that the phenomena varies with race due to evolution over millions of years. This means that we should no longer play by the norms but continue to charter one that is unnatural. Bacon strips man of his naturalness then paints them to depict a construct of what he wants to portray. He can be described as a nihilist for this matter of unnaturalness while his imagery of tortured bodies confined in recurring spaces of scream or cry (Schmied2006, p. 7).
References
Ades, D., & Forge, A. (1985). Francis Bacon. London: The Tate Gallery.
Arya, R. (2009). Remaking the body: The cultural dimensions of Bacon. Journal for Cultural Research , 13, 143-158.
Russell, J. (1993). Bacon . London: Thames and Hudson.
Schmied, W. (2006). Francis Bacon. Commitment and Conflict. Verlag, Munich: Prestel.
Sylvester, D. (1993). Interviews with David Sylvester. London: Thames and Hudson.
