FRANCIS BACON: Study - Man Talking

When Francis Bacon died in 1992 he had enjoyed nearly three decades esteemed by many as one of the most important painters of the 20th century. He steadfastly maintained the importance of the human figure in painting and refused to yield to the hegemony of non-representational works done by his contemporaries, the Abstract Expressionists. Still, he incorporated many of their techniques. At the time of his death his reputation in Britain was iconic, and yet, despite his phenomenal success, he was often desolate and tortured. He was a bundle of enigmas and contradictions, highly driven to succeed yet at the same time finding the very effort futile and absent of meaning.

The son of a staunchly imperialist British army major and a cosseting mother, Bacon was homosexual at a time when acting on his desires was a dangerous activity to be conducted in secrecy; his social life was built within the milieu of the underworld providing the foundation for often violent and unfulfilled love.

He saw our human state and respected social orders in decay and painted according to this view. Many of his works were put behind glass to work as mirrors in which one is forced to confront himself amid the tension and ugliness of the artist’s twisted forms.