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Francis Bacon was one of the most powerful and enigmatic creative geniuses of the twentieth century. Immediately recognizable, his paintings continue to challenge interpretations and provoke controversy. Bacon was also an extraordinary personality. Generous but cruel, forthright yet manipulative, ebullient but in despair: He was the sum of his contradictions. This life, lived at extremes, was filled with achievement and triumph, misfortune and personal tragedy.
In his revised and updated edition of an already brilliant biography, Michael Peppiatt has drawn on fresh material that has become available in the sixteen years since the artist’s death. Most important, he includes confidential material given to him by Bacon but omitted from the first edition. Francis Bacon derives from the hundreds of occasions Bacon and Peppiatt sat conversing, often late into the night, over many years, and particularly when Bacon was working in Paris. We are also given insight into Bacon’s intimate relationships, his artistic convictions and views on life, as well as his often acerbic comments on his contemporaries.
Bacon created a closely guarded myth of his excessive, tumultuous personal life, never wanting his enigmatic, powerfully disturbing paintings to be explained away with a simple biographical anecdote. He also blocked biographies from being published, and destroyed many of his paintings that didn't pass muster. Peppiatt, a friend of the artist's and the editor of Art International, respects Bacon's controlling, antireductionist instinct—not out of deference, but because no brief catalog of life experiences could explain the complex horror of any one of Bacon's paintings. The artist spent his early years in Ireland and England. He was as flamboyantly gay as the times would allow and was thrown out of the family by his father, who caught him wearing Mrs. Bacon's underwear. He traveled to Berlin and Paris and lived on the edge, associating with high society and low-lifes alike—a social fluency he retained his entire life. He endured, and sometimes enjoyed, beatings from various lovers. He drank to excess, took pills, and slept little. Ultimately, Bacon synthesized an artistic territory distinctly his own; he was "insufficiently surreal" to join the surrealists and too figurative to be an abstractionist. The unsettling power of his work eventually brought throngs of visitors to the most prestigious galleries in Europe and America. And his appeal endures: A recent exhibition in France drew up to five thousand visitors a day.
Peppiatt stalks and bags elusive prey: a better understanding of a disturbing body of work created by a man who lived inscrutably, in purposeful chaos.
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgements xi
Preface xiii
Part 1 1909-44
1 The Weakling of the Family', 1909-26 3
2 Educated Abroad: Berlin and Paris, 1926-28 28
3 A Brief Apprenticeship, 1928-33 54
4 'Insufficiently Surreal', 1933-39 73
5 A Vision without Veils, 1939-44 94
Part 2 1944-63
6 Father Figures and Crucifixions, 1944-46 115
7 Towards Other Shores, 1946-50 133
8 Hounded by Furies, 1950-54 159
9 Truth Told by a Lie, 1954-58 186
10 Recognition at Home: The Tate Retrospective, 1958-63 215
Part 3 1963-92
11 'A Brilliant Fool Like Me', 1963-69 243
12 All the Honours of Paris, 1969-72 273
13 Elegy for the Dead, 1972-75 298
14 'My Exhilarated Despair', 1975-80 328
15 Alone in the Studio, 1980-84 357
16 'The Greatest Living Painter', 1984-92 375
Postscript: The Afterlife of an Atheist 393
Notes 419
Selected Bibliography 444
Index 449
Anonymous
Posted February 10, 2013
Can chu move the forest to Forrest result 3 actually?
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Posted February 9, 2013
(Actually i remember every thing)
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Posted February 9, 2013
Oh.
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Posted February 10, 2013
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Anonymous
Posted February 7, 2013
Walks in and then lays down on a bed. "Finaaly, I found my cabin!"
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Posted February 8, 2013
Listens
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Posted February 6, 2013
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Anonymous
Posted October 27, 2009
This is the second biography I have read of Francis Bacon and Peppiatt's biography is a truly joyful read about an extraordinary and complex man. The book reads like a page turning novel ... I found it is paced beautifully and written with splendid wit and insight. An absolute must read for any admirer of the inimitable Francis Bacon.
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Overview
Francis Bacon was one of the most powerful and enigmatic creative geniuses of the twentieth century. Immediately recognizable, his paintings continue to challenge interpretations and provoke controversy. Bacon was also an extraordinary personality. Generous but cruel, forthright yet manipulative, ebullient but in despair: He was the sum of his contradictions. This life, lived at extremes, was filled with achievement and triumph, misfortune and personal tragedy.
In his revised ...