MFAH Francis Bacon exhibition shines light on late works
When one thinks of Francis Bacon’s work, one thinks of large triptychs that seem to engulf and draw the viewer into the image. The works are analogous to the large altar pieces found in cathedrals across Europe.
That analogy is apt, although maybe Bacon, a life-long atheist, would have rejected the suggestions of the religious. Perhaps the spiritual may have been palatable. After all, Bacon felt that his work should not be “seen” so much as “felt.”
“Francis Bacon: Late Paintings from the Center Pompidou, Paris,” on display at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston through May 25, is an immersive experience. The paintings almost overwhelm with passion — for both sexuality and of grief.
The exhibition covers the last 20 years of the Irish painter’s life, mainly from the suicide of his lover George Dyer on Oct. 24, 1971, two days before Bacon’s Grand Palais retrospective.
The show is a re-working of last fall’s Pompidou Center exhibition that looked at Bacon’s literary influences. This show has trimmed much of that away, but one cannot talk about Bacon without referencing his literary influences (his own library ran to 1,200 volumes).
The show opens with a large Richard Avedon portrait that echoes Bacon’s use of diptych, from April 11, 1979, and shifts to display several self-portraits. These images are recognizable as the artist, but the features have been pushed and smeared around the faces as though they are in constant motion. It is as if we must struggle to make sense of an image that is constantly shifting.
Bacon was an existentialist and lived for the moment. Like many of his paintings, it is as though he is constantly caught between moments that must be deciphered.
In “Three Studies for Self-Portrait” from 1979, the faces appear to be on the verge of disappearing into blackness.
“In Memory of George Dyer,” from 1971, is a stunning piece. Its three panels are linked by pink blankness, reflecting some undeciphered narrative. The right panel has a portrait of Dyer, taken from a photograph by Roger Deakins, on the wall (a familiar Bacon motif), with another version sliding off the frame onto a table.
The left panel features a twisted wrestler. The wrestler is another recurring motif, often with two figures that are intertwined as symbols of aggressive masculinity as well as male sexuality. Bacon was a radical and his “queerness” was overt in an age when one was expected to be discreet.
The center panel is, unusually, one of Bacon’s more obvious narrative scenes. A shadowy Dyer stands on a stairway landing next to a doorway, a muscular arm growing out of the figure and turning a key. Where does the doorway lead?
In many ways, this painting typifies Bacon’s central themes — the human capacity for violence, the human obsession with sex and the human obsession with death.
The twisted figures in Bacon’s paintings are a nod to Pablo Picasso, one of his major influences. Bacon, born in Dublin in 1909, was a relatively late bloomer and didn’t start painting until he saw a 1927 Picasso exhibition. He was very much a self-styled art historian, was obsessed with Vincent van Gogh and, especially, Diego Velazquez. He looked at reproductions in books. Even when drawing figures he liked to work from photographs. He preferred to be alone when he painted and found the presence of models to be a distraction.
Bacon’s later work seems to strip down the vocabulary of his earlier work. The first big “Triptych,” from 1967, is more cluttered, less sparse, and features a center panel that is a murder scene (Bacon liked to work from newspaper photos) with a bloody torso that looks like meat. That panel is flanked by images of two men intertwined — again, wrestling or screwing?
“Female Nude Standing in Doorway” is a nod to Picasso. The twists and turns of the physical features are a a clear homage, although still with Bacon’s inimitable brustrokes.
In “Triptych 1986-7” Bacon presents us with historical figures flanking a “knight in armor.” The left panel features a representation of Woodrow Wilson from a 1919 summit. The right panel is the desk where Leon Trotsky was killed. The center panel’s “knight” is a naked man on a chair, his “armor” actually cricket pads. The man has no arms, a wry nod to the broken antiquaries found in museums.
Bacon was critical of the Abstract Expressionists, especially Mark Rothko. Bacon was never an abstract painter, no matter how twisted and distorted his imagery, and he felt the American group missed the human element.
The bright red background in the 1984 “Street Scene” seems like a direct rebuke of Rothko’s color fields. The image was taken from a newspaper photo of a murder scene, and the red also represents the blood.
In “Study from the Human Body” we are again confronted with a doorway and a key. This time the figure, rather than in shadow, is bright but fading into nothingness.
Bacon’s last completed painting is “Study of a Bull” from 1991. There is an emptiness to the frame, and the bull seems to bring his career back full circle to the influential Picasso show of 1927 (the bull was a recurring motif for the Spaniard). Bacon, aware of his mortality, even incorporated dust into the painting. The piece drips with Bacon’s major themes — light and shadow, white and black, life and death.
As he aged, he spent more and more time in Spain where he visited the Prado to see the Velazquez paintings. Ironically, he died in a Madrid care facility run by nuns, a crucifix above his head.
Bacon’s late works are full of vitality. Part of that energy is grief, but he does not shy away from it. He was a fireman during the London blitz in World War II. He saw first hand the toll of death and violence. Yet the paintings are marvelous, immersive works, every bit as meditative in their own way as the Rothkos he decried.
Bacon shows us that the power of art to comment on and to transcend the human condition cannot be discounted.
“Francis Bacon: Late Paintings” is on display at MFAH’s Audrey Jones Beck Building, 5601 Main St. in Houston.
For more, visit www.mfah.org.
Story by Andy Coughlan, ISSUE editor
