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September 9, 2008
Francis Bacon retrospective at the Tate
Bacon's work was included in important U.S. collections during his lifetime. He never quite conquered New York where the dominant styles were first the abstraction of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, then the cool of Pop and Minimalism.His work, in contrast, was messily, sometimes squalidly, figurative. It was about subjects such as mortality, sex, and fear. New York critics often found it nasty and corny.
They had half a point. Bacon's work is a complex mixture. One of his aims was to make what he painted more real than any photograph could -- or as he put it in an interview with art critic David Sylvester, "to bring the figurative thing up onto the nervous system more violently and more poignantly."
Bacon is maybe the best example - certainly MY favorite example - of art that is disturbing and great. Better than de Kooning, easily.
I'm still thinking, five years after seeing it for the first time, about Bacon's Oedipus and the Sphinx (after Ingres). Here's the Ingres painting. Gosh.
I don't like rawness and self-torture, but I don't really like tragedy, either. That doesn't mean we live in a non-tragic world.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at September 9, 2008 11:56 AM
Comments
First Bacon painting I saw (sounds like it would be high in cholesterol)was here in Omaha, at the Josylyn: the large, screaming Pope X. At the time, I thought it was too "easy" (because ugly art is easy, I think.) I came to appreciate him more as I learned more and saw more. He's a hero for tortured artist types I've known, especially the ones that like intoxicants. I think what many people miss seeing is that he is not amoral or immoral but a moralist.
Posted by: marc at September 9, 2008 1:06 PM