Francis Bacon
A Self-Portrait in Words
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
A new selection of letters, statements, and interviews reveals the preoccupations, thoughts, and ideas of Francis Bacon, one of the twentieth century’s most influential and important artists.
The documents selected for Francis Bacon: A Self-Portrait in Words illustrate Bacon’s sharp wit and ability to express complex ideas in highly personal, memorable language. Included here are not only letters to friends, patrons, and fellow artists, but also intriguing notes and lists of paintings. They often come with a sketch as an aide-mémoire or an injunction to himself as he worked in the studio, and many have only come to light since his death.
Bacon's letters mirror and reveal his dominant preoccupations at different points throughout his long career. Most of Bacon's letters have never been published and include several that he wrote to author Michael Peppiatt. Particularly intriguing is the record of a dream that he jotted down, outlining impossibly beautiful paintings he had conjured up in his sleep. Together with photographs, archive material, and works by the artist are numerous reproductions of Bacon's characteristic handwriting, from the briefest jottings and notes to more extensive letters and statements.
Bacon frequently came up with memorable epithets and definitions. He delighted in doing with words what he set out to do in painting: "I like phrases that cut me." Peppiatt explores the personal legacy of one of the twentieth century's most important painters and presents a compelling verbal self-portrait that reveals both man and artist.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Art critic Peppiatt (Francis Bacon) excerpts documents, letters, transcripts, and other ephemera to present a revealing window into the mind of the famously private painter (1909–1992). For an artist who professed to have "little interest in or talent for" writing, Bacon provides plenty to chew on here, from stained and creased studio notes to jottings to friends and artist's statements in which he spends as much time expounding on the human condition as on his work ("Man now realizes that he is an accident, a completely futile being, that he has to play out the game without reason"). Selected interviews shed light on Bacon's artistic vision and its juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, though an excess of brusque "could you possibly lend me" letters to friends, patrons, and gallery owners becomes tedious. While the sheer wealth of material obscures some gems, the intimate portrait that emerges—of Bacon apologetic over drunken escapades, occasionally desperate for money, and determined, in the face of "the great wave of abstraction... unfurling over the Western world," to keep "the human figure as his central focus"—captivates. For Bacon aficionados, this is a must. Illus.
