francis bacon exhibition

The Francis bacon exhibition

(28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992)

Before visiting the exhibition….

I didn’t want to experience too much of Francis Bacon’s art work before visiting because I found it important to get a first time, fresh feeling when viewing his artwork face to face. But I did some background research on his life and his past to get a better understanding of the experiences he has been through had how this lead to producing the collection. The clear message of atheism and a life without god or after life was a very interesting aspect to explore through his artwork, as I do not live with that view, really intrigued me and wanted to look into someone’s life experiences. His struggle with his sexuality and how this impacted the relationship with his father, was a major factor through the information that I researched, and was interested to see how this struggle impacted some of his work. (Felt a connection through him living for 18 mouths in my hometown, Cheltenham).

The BBC video on Francis Bacon’s exhibition gave an informative aspect on the exhibition on a whole and revealed aspects of the artwork that I probably would have missed. It revealed that Francis bacon was a very intense, emotion and descriptive individual, and this will be translated into his pieces.

First responses to the room format and layout of artwork….

When entering the first room ANIMAL, I was intrigued by the room structure of the exhibition and how this would section the experiences and emotions that he wants to tap into through the artwork. I really love the impact a lot of the paintings gave out, head VI, really created a lot of frustration and anxiety through the shift of detail around the mouth and then the large harsh paint strokes that surrounded.

This method is repeated a lot through the other pieces to create the message of distortion and mystery but the strength of pain is the strongest emotion throughout the artwork.

My favourite in this section is the study for nude, because I just love the feeling of rejection that is drawn from this piece. There is such clarity produced by the white on black colour scheme, and really stands out from the other pieces.

Room 2: ZONE
These selections of paintings were really looking how space and juxtaposition can really transform a painting. He uses powerful brush strokes with a shift of colour to create a cage like psychological zone. Amazing how the painting ‘innocent pope’ is transformed from the first room with the use of creating a zone and space.

Room 3: APPREHENSION
A much darker shift when you enter this room from the previous paintings. Even through there is a similarity in colour the painting styles differ between the animal paintings, that have a lot of texture and obvious emotion, and the figure paintings, where the figure has a very simple background. Apparently this section is strongly collected to the illegality of homosexuality, and his love affair with Peter Lacy. The physical distortions of the paintings were derived from Eadweard Muybridge’s sequential photographs that inspired the motion in bacons paintings.