Francis Bacon

Not a bad selection of FB's work salvaged from the wreck of the old ATU site, but clearly this is another thread that needs developing:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WrQd-AxKRcMJ:acrosstheuniverse.forumotion.com/t1984-bacon-s-three-studies-for-figures-at-the-base-of-a-crucifixion+acrosstheuniverse+%2B+francis+bacon&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&source=www.google.co.uk

To discuss Francis Bacon is necessarily to discuss London's bohemian quarter, Soho, in the 1950's, of which FB was an habituee.

That's why I've attached here a short thread on Daniel Farson, a fellow 1950's Soho barfly and Bacon's biographer (see the last post of this thread for a very good personal memoir by Farson of Francis Bacon):

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TkHeVbxdv3UJ:acrosstheuniverse.forumotion.com/t1973-daniel-farson-s-photography+acrosstheuniverse+%2B+daniel+farson&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&source=www.google.co.uk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULIRq8wFzE4
Trailer for "Love is the Devil": Francis Bacon biopic starring Derek Jacobi as FB.

eddie wrote:To discuss Francis Bacon is necessarily to discuss London's bohemian quarter, Soho, in the 1950's, of which FB was an habituee.

In Graham Lord's excellent biography of fellow Soho-ite Jeffery Bernard, he describes a champagne-fuelled lunch that Bacon treated Jeff to at Wheeler's, on Old Compton St, towards the end of which, and right next to a table of horrified American tourists, Bacon loudly declared how much he'd love to fuck Colonel Gadaffi.

^

With Andy/nemo's posts self-deleted, let's try to preserve what's left of the original ATUI cache before this thread becomes completely pointless:

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The Triptych that first established Bacon's reputation as the painter of modern alienation and anxiety.

Note that it's "a" crucifixion, and not "the" crucifixion. No room for Christianity in Bacon's world view. To him, we're all meat.

Figure With Meat, 1954- FB.

Head IV, 1948.

One of several so-called "Screaming Pope" paintings after Velasquez. Bacon always maintained that the figure is sneezing rather than screaming.

The glass box is an echo of the trail of Nazi war criminal Eichman: a bullet-proof dock in an Israeli court.

"When we're dead we're no use any more; we're finished. When I'm dead, wrap me in a plastic bag and throw me in the gutter..."

(Francis Bacon)

Dharma Wheel wrote: This one was a better dresser...

Ah, but did the true author of Shakespeare's work dye his hair with boot polish?:


Francis Bacon. Photograph by Bill Brandt.

If the mouth in Head IV looks familiar, you saw it first here:



The Nurse from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. Odessa Steps sequence.

Hosni wrote:

Eddie wrote:


Figure With Meat, 1954- Francis Bacon.


I believe this Bacon painting is the one that Joker Jack Nicholson saves from being destroyed by one of his goons in Tim Burton's BAT-MAN: The Motion Picture, while music by Prince is being played on a boom-box.

By no means the only Bacon to appear on celluloid: reclusive rock star Turner (Mick Jagger) in Roeg/Cammell's Performance has a Bacon on the wall of his Notting Hill Gate drum.

Bacon began his creative life in the slightly surprising role of a designer of furniture and interior decor.

This legacy lived on into his mature painterly work in which he often demonstrated a good eye for a nice piece of furniture:


Centre panel for Self-Portrait Triptych, 1985-6.

Study for a portrait of John Edwards, 1985.