Birth,Sex Anddeath Francis Bacon's Tragic Visionof

16 |VisualArt BIRTH, SEX AND DEATH FRANCIS BACON’S TRAGIC VISION OF MANKIND Amajor exhibition in Paris spanning the final two decades of Bacon’s oeuvre makes clear the visceral autobiographical nature of the artist’s work LARA MARLOWE inspirations and his late goal of recounting presented in aglass case inside adarkened Clytemnestra, who killed her husband, his own life, intertwined with the history of room. An actor’s voice reads excerpts, in Agamemnon, who sacrificed his daughter, the 20th century. The later paintings are English. Iphigenia. Bacon was fascinated by the tale, rancis Bacon met George Dyer, characterised by intense colours, including “It may be that Francis Bacon’s literary and by Eliot’s modern version in The the man he most painted and pinks, mauves, yellows and oranges, and a passion came from his Irish learning,” says Family Reunion. most desired, when Dyer, apetty more precise and spare style. Ottinger. “Ireland is the country of poets. Bacon used the Furies from Aeschylus to criminal from east London, “After the Paris exhibition Iamdeter- Yeats was fundamental for him.” symbolise the guilt that gnawed at him F dropped through the skylight of mined to get started on the painting of my Ottinger perceives “a profound affinity” about Dyer’s death. In 1988 he painted the Bacon’s mews house one night in 1963, autobiography,” Bacon said, referring to In among the six writers in their tragic sense Furies as surreal creatures resembling intending to commit robbery. Memory of George Dyer, his 1971 triptych. of history and Nietzschean philosophy, “by disembodied organs. The first seems to “You’re very clumsy for aburglar,” Bacon “I hope by means of this series to crystallise which Imean Dionysus and Apollo, form crouch over itself in pain and grief. Two allegedly told Dyer, who was 25 years his time, in the same way as Proust did in his and meaning, light and shadow, life and others are threatening and screaming junior. “Take your clothes off. Come into novels.” death, Eros and Thanatos, civilisation and human mouths mounted on neck-like my bed, and afterwards you can take Bacon was consumed by guilt about barbarianism.” stems. whatever you want to.” Dyer’s death. “Not an hour goes by, of In The Oresteia, Aeschylus’s trilogy of Bacon’s nightmarish orifices remind one Bacon’s tender and brutal relationship course, when Idon’t think about George,” tragic dramas, Orestes kills his mother, of the mouth that appears on Samuel with Dyer lasted eight years, until Dyer Bacon told his biographer Michael Beckett’s pitch-black stage in Not I. The died from an overdose of alcohol and Peppiatt. “I feel profoundly guilty about painter traced their inspiration to ascene in barbituates in their Paris hotel room, two his death. If Ihadn’t gone out, if I’d simply Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potem- days before Bacon’s retrospective was to stayed in and made sure he was all right, kin. “I hoped to make the best painting of a open at the Grand Palais, in October 1971. he might have been alive now.” human scream,” he told the British art Bacon was by then world famous, Bacon was born on Baggot Street in In Memory of George critic David Sylvester. “I wasn’t able. attracting prices that rivalled Picasso’s. Dublin and spent most of the first 16 years Eisenstein’s is much better.” Distraught though Bacon was, he hushed of his life in Ireland. Barbara Dawson, ‘‘Dyer, from 1971, shows Meat carcasses are another recurring up Dyer’s death to prevent it distracting director of Dublin City Gallery the Hugh theme. “A friend from Bacon’s youth later from his crowning achievement. Lane, acquired the contents of Bacon’s Dyer as aboxer who recounted how Bacon would stop at a Francis Bacon: Books and Painting,a London studio, including more than 1,000 has suffered a butcher’s shop in Kildare on the cycle ride major exhibition spanning the last two books from Bacon’s library, for Dublin in back from Naas tennis club,” Barbara decades of Bacon’s oeuvre, at the Pompidou 1998. The studio was reconstructed down to knockout blow, Dawson recalls. Centre in Paris until January 20th, 2020, the tiniest details inside the Hugh Lane. A writhing on the floor. “If Igointo abutcher’s shop Ialways does not dwell on Bacon’s love life, although maquette is included in the exhibition at the think it’s surprising that Iwasn’t there his sadomasochistic homosexuality is Pompidou Centre. In the middle panel, instead of the animal,” Bacon later told omnipresent in the paintings. Nor does it Ottinger took the unprecedented ap- Sylvester. mention the astronomical prices command- proach of comparing Bacon’s oeuvre to adark figure stands Like Aeschylus, Bacon favoured the ed by his works. (The record was set by prose by six writers who inspired him. The before the staircase triptych as aform of expression. Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which sold curator borrowed books by Aeschylus, In Memory of George Dyer, from 1971, for ¤106 million in New York in 2013.) Nietzsche, Joseph Conrad, TS Eliot and the to their room in the shows Dyerasaboxerwho has suffered a Instead the Pompidou show, curated by French writers Georges Bataille and Michel knockout blow,writhingonthe floor. In the Didier Ottinger, focuses on Bacon’s literary Leiris from the Hugh Lane. Each book is Hôtel des Saints-Pères middle panel, adark figure stands before THE IRISH TIMES | Ticket |Saturday, September 28, 2019 VisualArt |17 morbid or hard about his painting, “only the violence that surrounds men at every second of their lives”. “Birth, sex and death. He gets it by the throat,” says Dawson. “It’s visceral. And yet he manages to make it quite beautiful. He creates the most beautiful colours, the most interesting compositions. They can be tender, in the way that abruised face can be tender.” There was “a lot of anguish, alot of torment” in Bacon, Dawson continues. “He said he shared with the Irish acertain exhilarated despair, or adesperate opti- mism.” Ottinger, the curator of the Pompidou exhibition, also bridles when Isuggest that death and barbarity are the dominant features of Bacon’s oeuvre. “Look at the mastery of the execution,” he says. “Look at Above: In Memory of George Dyer, Francis his deployment of geometric forms. Bacon Bacon’s 1971 triptych based on his lover Dyer was fascinated by perfect forms of geome- (with Bacon, left, on the Orient Express in 1964. try. He painted polyhedrons everywhere.” Top right: Bacon in Paris in September 1987. Polyhedrons are solid figures with many PHOTOGRAPHS: JOHN DEAKIN ARCHIVE/GETTY; plane faces, usually more than six. They RAPHAEL GAILLARDE/GAMMA-RAPHO/GETTY often frame or encase Bacon’s figures. Bacon developed his concept of immacu- own life story. late painting in his last decades. The term Triptych 1986-1987 portrays historic means, literally, spotless, but it took on an figures, including Woodrow Wilson de- almost metaphysical meaning for him. He scending the steps of the French foreign told Sylvester that his Water from aRun- ministry after agreeing to the treaty that ning Tap, from 1982, was the most immacu- would lead to the second World War. The late of his paintings. site of the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Art historians long considered Bacon’s Mexico appears in the same triptych, also final 20 years to be his weakest. Ottinger inspired by anewspaper photograph. John believes they were his best years, “because Edwards, Bacon’s friend, surrogate son and they appear so to me, and because Bacon heir, appears seated, naked and oozing pink said it”. What was so special about them? liquid, in the central panel. Ottinger replies with one word: “Immacu- Bacon’s art is too brutal, some might say late”. ghastly, to be immediately accessible or the staircase to their roominthe Hôtel des from the portrait and lands like areflection pleasing. The excretions, suppurating FrancisBacon:BooksandPaintingisatthe Saints-Pères. Tornnewspapers,another on ablue tabletop. White paint is smattered wounds, raw meat and carrion are unset- PompidouCentre,inParis,untilJanuary20th, recurringtheme, are Bacon’s nod to cubism. across Dyer’s chest. Bacon marked paint- tling. But Bacon claimed there was nothing 2020.Seecentrepompidou.frformore Adisembodied arm is wrapped around the ings that held an erotic charge for him with darkfigure’s back, and turns akey in alock. sperm-like stains. Bacon borrowed the image of the arm Triptych May-June 1973 recounts the from Picasso’s Bathers of Dinard, which he circumstances of Dyer’s death. On the left, had seen in a1927 exhibition at Paul Rosen- amale figure is crouched on the toilet, the berg’s gallery in Paris. Bacon worked as a position in which Dyer was found. In the decorator at the time. Picasso’s surrealist centre, black shadows seep from Dyer’s canvases made him want to be apainter. In anguished figure, beneath anaked light 1936 he tried to join asurrealist exhibition bulb. On the right, Dyer vomits into asink. in London, but he was rejected on the Again, Bacon marked the triptych with grounds he was not surrealist enough. smears of white paint. In the right-hand panel of In Memory of Bacon identified with the tragic sense of George Dyer, Bacon’s dead lover is framed history he found in Aeschylus and Conrad. in profile. Dyer appears cleaved in two at In the 1970s he determined to paint the the chest. His mutilated trunk falls forward history of the 20th century, as well as his THE IRISH TIMES | Ticket |Saturday, September 28, 2019 Idorelishwhenthework isaboutsomething:not justentertainmentfor Ticket entertainment’ssakebut

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