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| Francis Bacon, Triptych August 1972, 1972, oil and sand on canvas, Tate. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. / DACS, London / ARS, NY 2019 |
"...Conceivably it served Bacon for Dyer to be wasted in the Paris hotel room..." (Virginia Billeaud Anderson - BoudinandBourbon.com previews the exhibition Francis Bacon: Late Paintings with MFAH curator Alison de Lima Greene, and Centre Pompidou’s Didier Ottinger.)
Francis Bacon: Late Paintings - Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston - A Tour with Alison de Lima Greene, Didier Ottinger Centre
Pompidou
A
salacious tale! Just before Francis Bacon’s 1971 retrospective exhibition at
the Grand Palais, his lover George Dyer caused a ruckus at the Hotel des
Saints-Peres by inundating himself with booze and pills, vomiting, then
slumping back on the toilet to die. Bacon admitted that Dyer would be alive, if
he had stayed with him in their suite. “I feel profoundly guilty.”
Several
months after the funeral, Bacon began to
reference the suicide in his paintings, some of which are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s exhibition Francis
Bacon: Late Paintings through May
25. I had the luck to see the art with MFAH curator Alison de Lima
Greene, and Centre Pompidou’s Didier Ottinger, and while doing so it occurred
to me that Dyer’s death
was an opportunity for Bacon.
I’m
not saying Bacon didn’t feel grief over losing his companion, the frequency
with which he artistically plundered the death reveals that he did. I am saying
however that Bacon was first and foremost a painter looking to parlay a subject.
According to the biographies, Bacon felt ambivalent about the relationship, his
sexual desire had ceased, and the barely literate, financially dependent, drug
addicted Dyer was inconvenient. Conceivably it served Bacon for Dyer to be wasted in the Paris hotel room instead of disrupting the exhibition’s opening
events. Big shots like President Pompidou were attending.
 |
| Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait, 1981, oil and dry transfer lettering on canvas, private Collection. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. / DACS, London / ARS, NY 2019 |
Bacon’s
crafting of diseased and decaying figures sitting on a toilet, or in a chair,
or plopped on the floor, had as much to do with strategy as with catharsis or exorcism.
For years before Dyer’s death, Bacon had exercised meticulous control over
distortions of form, hell bent that howling popes, crucifixions, entrails and
copulating queers be edgy and provocative. He similarly calibrated the Dyer death
paintings, but used fewer brush strokes. See Bacon's sparse painterly language in the gestural smears of grayish black
paint that form putrefied flesh and symbolize death and rot in Triptych August, 1972.
I
think New York Times Michael
Kimmelman had Bacon’s schematic deliberateness in mind when at the time of Bacon’s
2008 Tate exhibition he described the death triptychs as “a clear experiment in
conflicted sentiment.”
Michael
Peppiatt pondered Bacon’s dexterity at the time the press was calling Bacon the
greatest living painter. “Bacon alone,” Peppiatt wrote, “knew what part real
emotion had played, and what had come out of technical cunning.”
During
the tour, Gary Tinterow reminded us that Bacon intentionally created incoherent
narratives, his art wasn’t to be understood, it was to be felt. I felt a bit awe
struck. For me the distorted and melted figures pointed to a profound truth of existence,
our mortal predicament.
While
traipsing through the galleries I couldn’t help but think of David Sylvester’s often
repeated assertion that Bacon was an “old fashioned militant atheist who always
seemed to be looking for pretexts to issue a reminder that God was dead and to
bang a few nails into his coffin. Nevertheless, Bacon’s paintings, especially
the large triptychs, tend to have a structure and an atmosphere which make them
look as if they belonged in churches.” The museum’s breathtaking uncrowded presentation
supports Sylvester’s observation, it’s easy to recognize that Bacon arranged images in the manner of altar pieces and religious art.
How
interesting that Bacon spit venom against religion, yet borrowed unceasingly from
it. In his philosophy, death ends our existence, and only our urges and
appetites have meaning. Ultimately Bacon’s
philosophical beliefs made his own death absurd, as Tinterow pointed out, a final paradox
of Bacon’s life was that he died in a hospital run by Catholic nuns with a
crucifix over his head.
 |
Alison de Lima Greene with Bacon’s “Study from the Human Body,” 1983 |
 |
| Centre Pompidou’s Didier Ottinger with “Water From a Running Tap,” 1982 in background. |
 |
| Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait, 1971, oil on canvas, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art modern-Centre de création industrielle, Paris. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. / DACS, London / ARS, NY 2019 |
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wonderful closer introspection on Bacon paintings! Virginia!
ReplyDeletemakes it a must see for art connoisseurs and artists
Becky Soria
Merci Bec! Thank you for taking the time.
ReplyDelete