30-11-2024: FRANCIS BACON IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
For many years, Francis Bacon was a painter who showed me the way and I still consult him often. That's why I had to see the exhibition 'FRANCIS BACON: THE HUMAN PRESENCE'. It was the third time I visited a retrospective of his work. (click on the title to go to the National Portrait Gallery site)
I think I can say that after all these years of leafing through books about him (I have eight; one is the extensive biography and then there are two in which he himself frequently speaks, the rest is mainly filled with images) and having often seen his work in real life, I have a clear picture of what his work entails.
Born just before the First World War and made famous just after the Second World War, naturally you will find the resonance of those events in his work, even though he will have denied it. In a way rightly so, his work is not so much about the wars as about a state of being, standing in the world. This fitted well with his character (a somewhat tormented sadomasochist) and unfortunate upbringing. You could say, the man with the right character appears at the right time and the right place.
What makes him so valuable to me is the keynote of carnality. Whereas in Picasso's works the tormented physical presence is not so heavily present, not even in his 'GUENICA', it reverberates through almost all of Bacon's works. His breaking of the realistic image has to do with this too, is a meaningful distortion.
He never had a thorough training in painting from nature. This makes that in the parts that are not really important, his solutions can become quite banal. In the fifties he often gives the background a lively role, it plays along, after that all often becomes a kind of jigsawing.
I'm smuggling/lying a little here, because I wanted to show these two, it doesn't really cover the load, but well... that shoe in the right canvas, as how it jumps forward...
His way of working is very direct, there is little layering and therefore little possibility for correction. It is often a single layer of paint over a surface. Only in the faces does he sometimes continue working. What is striking (for this the work must be seen in real life) is that his figures are not only often in a closed space (sometimes as in a glass cube) but are also closed off from that space, as it were, because the background, the space in which they are located, does not continue behind them. Hence my comment about jigsawing. They are, as it were, sawn out, outlined by the untreated canvas or often outlined in red or green.
Green which is to some extent the inverted color of human skin. Almost all human figures are painted in the normal skin colour. What he beautifully plays with are the heavy shadows. Deep shadows that act as holes in which the shape continues. Sometimes it seems as if the person is trapped in his own shell.
Is his fame so great because we still feel so clearly the 'Zeitgeist' of the two world wars? Will he, like Lourens Alma Tadema, for example, tumble from his throne after some time? I think that moment will certainly come. Just as it will count for Picasso and Matisse. The invention of photography and the associated evolution in painting may have already faded to some extent. Does it really make sense to paint cubist?
At first it was a revolution, a new way of showing the world set against the photograph, now it is often a hollow cry, uttered because of the ability to depict something adequately is lacking. And sometimes Bacon gets off track here too. Instead of painting a secondary part 'carefully vague', painting something by suggesting, but not heavily defined, he is sometimes quite lazy and banal. Too often no good 'sprezzatura'.
An exception is this painting. Everything is right for me here.
And where should we go? We have passed Rothko's black canvasses and now what? I have often talked about it in other texts; there is still 'progress' in what some artists are making now. I have to check Wittgenstein again; after his Tractatus Logicus-Philosophicus, he talked about language games... Once you have found the edges in which everything can be defined, you have to wander around and enjoy. And don't keep on hanging on the edges.
Why did Bacon want to hide all his work behind glass? It creates distance. Of course, since he worked on unprepared canvas, his work is fragile, but was that the reason for him? During my visit to the exhibition, it bothered me considerably. Ok, this makes you more aware of your own presence as well as the surrounding environment. That may have been a reason, there is the work and you are clearly present... But the reflection of the light from the emergency exit did play a very striking role in this painting…
He was an admirer of Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Velazquez. He made a series of works inspired by the latter two. The striking thing is that he never saw the portrait of the pope Innocenzo X. Again that distance like the glass? Is it the fear of the ultimate confrontation?
I read jealousy in his comments about Michelangelo. The tormented spirit, the energy captured in the images did appeal to him enormously. The bodies in Bacon's paintings come off sparsely. They are often depicted in no more than twisted strokes. The bodies often remain flat and clumsy. A real expression of tension lacks many of them. He does not come close to Michelangelo.
Here too, it is striking that the bodies are often painted in a closed position. Many hands in the lap or arms wrapped around the legs. Often little attention is paid to the elaboration, detailing of the body. In Michelangelo's work, the body is very present. Thunderously present.
The sparsest are the spaces that Bacon paints. Walls and floors painted in only one uniform color.
Initially, the characters on his canvases are anonymous, later he starts portraying friends and acquaintances. He does not (yet) succeed in pinning down Lucien Freud or Frank Auerbach.
Later on he does with Muriel Belcher, Henrietta Moraes, Isabel Rawsthorne and most of all with George Dyer. In itself with all the distortion is a huge achievement.
Later in life, it slips away from him, becomes a trick or too ordinary.
It is an eternal pity that after the golden years (the sixties and early seventies) he became more and more a caricature of himself. Was it the alcohol, the environment of admirers or both? It is also possible that he saw no development, got stuck in the same idiom. It became a trick. It is said that his work became softer in tone; it became more shapeless, clichéd and powerless. The market passed that by, long live the genius! What a pity... I do not show images of late works.
What was very dear to me was seeing Rembrandt's small self-portrait painted in browns. I believe that it is doubted whether it was really painted by Rembrandt. It doesn't matter to me. It has that delicious 'fatness' of his other works. What I think is that he was probably so satisfied with the sketchy underpainting that he didn't go through with it. I look at everything with a painter's mentality and then it doesn't matter who painted it or whether it is a 'full-fledged' Rembrandt. As long as I like it.
Again, it was very difficult to see it properly, let alone take a decent picture of it. I understand that because of some environmental idiots, many works disappear behind glass, but it makes the world so much sadder…
Just like all those canvases with ramshackle cubist monstrosities that, in addition to the relativity of a single-image representation and interpretation of it, also utter a spastic cry of the so-called subconscious.
What is my final conclusion... I am very happy to have visited the exhibition, for me Bacon is a very important painter and must therefore be dissected all the more critically. I don't just get inspiration from what I find beautiful, but also what irritates me helps me further.
Not to end with an image of Rembrandt, here is the triptych in which Bacon commemorates the death of George Dyer.
I stayed at the house of my dear friend Janet, she writes for theater, television and film, writes poems, in short, someone with passion (click on her name to go to her site).
And I saw the play in which Nicole played the leading role. I hadn't seen her and Brian for so long... as an excuse, the exhibition was more than worth going to London.
Needless to say, I had brought pata negra for my friends.
Except for the triptych shown at the 'GUERNICA', all images of paintings can be seen in the exhibition. The exhibition will last until 19 January 2025. And the video, what else can I say...
