Irish-born English figurative painter
Francis Bacon
was born,
October 28, 1909
in 63 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin, Ireland
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Focusing on the human form, his subjects included crucifixions, portraits of popes, self-portraits, and portraits of close friends, with abstracted figures sometimes isolated in geometrical structures. Rejecting various classifications of his work, Bacon claimed that he strove to render “the brutality of fact.”
Bacon said that he saw images “in series”, and his work, which numbers c. 590 extant paintings along with many others he destroyed, typically focused on a single subject for sustained periods, often in triptych or diptych formats. His output can be broadly described as sequences or variations on single motifs; including the 1930s Picasso-influenced bio-morphs and Furies, the 1940s male heads isolated in rooms or geometric structures, the 1950s “screaming popes,” the mid-to-late 1950s animals and lone figures, the early 1960s crucifixions, the mid-to-late 1960s portraits of friends, the 1970s self-portraits, and the cooler, more technical 1980s paintings.
Whenever I begin working on an artist tribute, I more or less have already seen / admired their work and know what I’m in for. There are some painters though that never seize to amaze me every time I look at their work. Bacon is one of them.
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So here’s a glimpse of his work & words
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“It’s always hopeless to talk about painting – one never does anything but talk around it.”
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“Some paint comes across directly onto the nervous system and other paint tell you the story in a long diatribe through the brain.”
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“The chief consideration for a good painter is to think out the whole of his picture, to have it in his head as a whole… so that he may then execute it with warmth and as if the entire thing were done at the same time.”
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“You see, painting has now become, or all art has now become completely a game, by which man distracts himself. What is fascinating actually is, that it’s going to become much more difficult for the artists, because he must really deepen the game to become any good at all.”
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“If you can talk about it, why paint it?”
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“All of our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light.”
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“If you want to convey fact, this can only ever be done through a form of distortion. You must distort to transform what is called appearance into image.”
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“If I sit and daydream, the images rush by like a succession of colored slides.”
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“The feeling of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.”
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“The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure; it’s a little like making love, the physical act of love.”
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“Painting today is pure intuition and luck and taking advantage of what happens when you splash the stuff down.”
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“Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence – a reconcentration… tearing away the veils that fact acquires through time.”
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“I would like my picture to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail leaving its trail of the human presence… as a snail leaves its slime.”
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“I would like, in my arbitrary way, to bring one nearer to the actual human being.”
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“If my people look as if they’re in a dreadful fix, it’s because I can’t get them out of a technical dilemma.”
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“Painting is the pattern of one’s own nervous system being projected on canvas.”
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“Even within the most beautiful landscape, in trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is part of life.”
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“My painting is not violent; it’s life that is violent.”
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“Great art is deeply ordered. Even if within the order there may be enormously instinctive and accidental things, nevertheless they come out of a desire for ordering and for returning fact onto the nervous system in a more violent way.”
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“I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.”
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“The mystery lies in the irrationality by which you make appearance – if it is not irrational, you make illustration.”
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“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”
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We only have our nervous system to paint.
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I believe in deeply ordered chaos.
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Self Portraits
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Photos
Francis Bacon, photographed by Bill Brandt 
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Unlike my usual addition of music in these posts, I shall respect the painter’s wish to concentrate on a painting without listening to music.
However, I have added three videos about his work and life which I found very very interesting .
Here they are:
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Francis Bacon: A Brush with Violence
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Francis Bacon • Art documentary
A film by David Hinton, London. (1988)
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Francis Bacon: A collection of 369 works
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For more information on Bacon:
https://www.francis-bacon.com/
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/francis-bacon-682
https://www.moma.org/artists/272
https://www.wikiart.org/en/francis-bacon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon_(artist)
Marina Kanavaki 
These are incredible. I love the quotations as well.
Incredible artist! So glad you enjoyed his work! 🙏
That screaming pope is going to stay with me.
Right?!!! With you!
:O
Beautiful paintings!!
I agree with you! Thank you very much for your visit and comment! 🙏🙂
He is definitely unique!
That studio… who am I to judge 😉
Thanks for sharing… not one I would put on my wall, but interesting nonetheless!
I would be very surprised if his studio looked any other way! Hard work to digest but genius.
Happy weekend!!! ❤🤗❤
OMG!
How apropos that I opened this post on Hallowe’en!
Egads & without prejudice … the horror…. the horror …
His studio is awesome. My fave shot of all.
Putting the docus on hold for a rainy day!
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The horror indeed…from an incredible artist!!!
That studio is truly an item!!!😱😬🤣😂🤣
Hope you had a wonderful Halloween!
🎃🤗🎃🤗🎃🤗🎃🤗🎃🤗🎃🤗
I did!!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxo
xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Ahhhh now then, Bacon is one of my favourites from my youth. I always found a very strange beauty in his ‘grotesque’ images. I don’t know if that tells you more about him or me! Still to this day, I love his works. They remind me of Gerald Scarfe’s images from the 80s (particularly political ones and images from Pink Floyd’s The Wall) and the works of David Lynch. Great thought-provoking stuff!
His paintings are truly beautiful… to my eyes also. My kind of art… the one that dives into the deep! I can see what you mean about Scarfe and Lynch.
So glad you enjoyed this post, my friend. 🙏
Oh I’m so glad you get it like I do Marina! 🙂 x
I’m pretty sure we’re no the only ones!!!! 😉 Huge talent! But one needs to look deeper…
Really well done! The studio photo looks a bit like my room! Oh, how my father used to hate navigating my bedroom as a kid. But I knew exactly where everything was!
That’s why it’s called organized chaos.😉 However I think that the right expression for Bacon’s studio would have to be chaotic chaos!!! 🤣😉😉😉
Really impressive collection of pictures. I’ve seen some before but never really made the connection with the artist/name. I think there’s also a major philosopher by same name. Or is that Roger? I dunno… very nice post, Marina.
You are right. His family claims to be a descendant (is that the right word?!) from the English philosopher (1561-1626)
Right… I just checked… Roger was a sorta churchman/scholastic and Francis was as you say. All those years of pouring over secondary and reference works paying off!
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p.s. I’m remembering now… F. Bacon predicted/wrote about things sorta like TV and stuff. So he might have been a bit of a seer. .. wouldn’t be surprised if the two were related.
Can’t escape the genes huh?! 😉
Ha ha 😁
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Very unsettling images indeed. His self portraits are really fascinating in a very bizarre way.
They are, aren’t they, but he captured his own essence so well!
Great talent… and yes very unsettling too! 😘
He’s new to me. Certainly wouldn’t call his style as joyful or playful. I see dark realism – which is my term. Thanks for the introduction. Yamas!
Yes, joyful is one expression one couldn’t use for Bacon but he’s such a genius painter! 😉
Yamas!!!
No question.
…or playful! 😉🤣
I can see that.
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Disturbed and fascinating work. His “ordered chaos” is quite telling.
It is telling, isn’t it?!!! And yes to both. Extraordinary painter!
Hi
A surrealist? Fascinating! I really was kit must order some acrylics and get back to painting. Be safe my dear! 🌼🤗😊
I hope you do!I’d love to see your brushstrokes! 🤗
Not exactly surrealist… he was a figurative painter with his very own and distinct style! An amazing painter! 🤗❤🤗❤🤗
I was surprised, I never imagined his art being quite that “distinct…abstract,,,surreal. I don’t know!🤗❤🤗❤🤗
Yes…. i know what you mean!!!!
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