January 2009

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The press view at Tate Britain for its latest retrospective of Francis Bacon (the first was in 1960, the second in 1985) buzzed with a level of anticipation I’ve not often encountered. A self-taught painter, Bacon mutilated most of the work he produced between 1933-45 at the time, but once his work became known his popularity was quickly established, lasting throughout his life, and is, it seems, growing by the day.

Tate’s current retrospective is very much a ‘best of Bacon’, taking a chronological approach through a selection of 71 works, broken only by two thematic rooms that group his Crucifixion works (a theme the artist drew on throughout his career) and selected archival material taken from Bacon’s studio that, after his death, was painstakingly uplifted and moved in its entirety to public display in his birthplace of Dublin.

I was more than slightly interested to see this show, principally because I’ve never really been able to make up my mind about Francis Bacon’s work. I first came across Bacon’s name as a teenager under the spell of Lucian Freud’s drawings – in particular Freud’s 1951 portrait of Bacon – but never quite felt the impact that Bacon intended in his works so that the ‘paint comes across directly onto the nervous system’ – but I wanted to. Granted, the colour, scale (from the 1960s onwards Bacon rarely deviated from the 2-metre high by 1.5 metre wide format; three for the triptychs) and compositions are both arresting and impressive. But the paintings’ essence of human vulnerability, of man existing as just another animal or mound of flesh in a godless void (Bacon in a butcher’s shop apparently wondered why he himself wasn’t one of the carcasses), didn’t for me deliver the haunting psychological darkness and brutal isolation evident in the harrowed lines and down-turned eyes of some of Freud’s etched sitters. And walking through the Tate galleries, it still doesn’t. Put simply, it’s a big idea, boldly done, to the same effect each time. But it’s also an idea that’s been given more depth of treatment elsewhere, for my money in words more than paint. It’s not for nothing that Bacon references the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Aeschylus in his paintings from 1967-84. I wonder what he made of Beckett.

It may be that some of the impact of Bacon’s paintings has diminished with familiarity and time. The same is not true of the artist’s persona. Only recently did I discover Freud’s opinion that his portrait of Bacon, stolen in 1988 while on show at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, was probably lifted by a fan of Bacon rather than one of his own. Bacon’s reputation for mutilating paintings, frequenting Soho drinking dens, having intense and abusive relationships in a time when homosexuality was illegal, and as the figurehead of London bohemians in a period now revered for its creativity, has secured his iconic status.

And the sort of material emerging from the detritus of his studio will do nothing to harm this image. It includes photography by John Deakin of Bacon’s close friends only (Isabel Rawsthorne, Freud, his lover George Dyer) commissioned by the artist who then painted them in isolation, using the image as reference. In addition, scraps of magazine and newspaper cuttings with photography of sportsmen and wrestlers or drawings by Michelangelo have been resurrected from the litter of Bacon’s studio and smartly framed and hung on the wall. I can’t help feelings it’s slightly voyeuristic to riffle so fastidiously through this material – particularly when these sources were often and openly acknowledged by Bacon during his lifetime. Tate curators have brought to our attention the lists of potential subjects they have found in the studio – lists Bacon denied making, instead asserting the spontaneity of his approach. There’s also a wall of so-called drawings – another process that Bacon denied – but these are simple outlines of position rather than the finished drawings being produced by Bacon’s contemporaries. No doubt interesting discoveries will be made about Bacon’s process and technique, but the real essence of Bacon is, ultimately, in his scream alone.

'Francis Bacon' is at Tate Britain until 4 January.

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