|
FRANCIS BACON
1909 - 1992
"Natures that have much heat, and great and violent desires and perturbations, are not ripe for action till they have passed the meridian of their years." Sir Francis Bacon - The Viscount St. Albans
| ||
|
Michel Leiris
 FRANCIS BACON Self Portrait, c.1930 (source)
| ||
|
| ||
|
"It's all so meaningless . . . . . . we might as well be extraordinary." Francis Bacon quoting Nietzsche
As an artist whose early work was influenced by Bacon's paintings and images, I created "A Tribute to Francis Bacon," in 1995. It was my first venture in web site design. My intent was to provide a visually attractive site with basic information on Bacon's life and artwork with special emphasis on those who influenced Bacon - personally and professionally - and on his development as an artist. At the time the site was created, there were not that many personal web sites on Francis Bacon. The WebMuseum had many high resolution images and there were a few scholarly text sites (Bacon and Bataille) online. The most attractive and interesting web site was at Urban Desires (Volume 2, Issue 5, September 1996) and latter, in June 1999, at Queer Arts Resource. Today the Internet is glutted with information on Bacon's life and bloated with repetitive images of Bacon and his art. Anyone with access to a scanner, a book of Bacon's paintings, and a copy of a biography on Bacon - Michael Peppiatt's "Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma" (1998), Daniel Farson's "The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon" (1993), and David Sylvester's "The Brutality of Fact, Interviews with Francis Bacon" (1998), being the most often used - can create a web site on Francis Bacon - regardless of what is already available online. The quality of these web sites vary considerably: some are original in content, attractive in web design, and informative on aspects of Bacon's life and art; many use copyright text and images without acknowledging sources; a few are simply pompous and mean-spirited; and . . . . . . too many are just plain ordinary.
I have decided to limit this site to a few articles, images, and links on Francis Bacon while concentrating on lesser known but equally "extraordinary" artists. I hope you enjoy what's left. . .
Scattergood-Moore
 PAGE 2
|
"Francis Bacon's clean-shaven face, at once chubby and tormented, and as roseate as that of some eighteenth-century English empirical philosopher discoursing over his brandy or his sherry, seems to reflect wide-eyed astonishment as well as an intelligent stubbornness and - allied to a hidden fury - the sensitive distress of a man who has not forgotten that he was once a child whom almost anything could move to wonder. His forelock, which is well in evidence in all his self-portraits, like a reckless comma staunchly inscribed across his brow, appears to be there as an emblem showing that, inside his head, nothing proceeds according to the lazy norms of some already accepted pattern, but that everything is liable to be called into question, cut short or left in suspense. Perhaps it is this same rejection of ready-made solutions which is indicated by his slightly askew - or, at any rate, not at all full-frontal - stance in many of his photographs; like his walk, always, one might think, on the point of breaking into a dance, it could signify a distaste for the sedate tranquility of those who have never felt the ground crumbling away beneath their feet."
