A Painting by Francis Bacon

Author(s): Edward B. Henning

Source: The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art , Nov., 1983, Vol. 70, No. 9 (Nov.,
1983), pp. 354-359
Published by: Cleveland Museum of Art

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25159833

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 A Painting by Francis Bacon

A painting of a male head, dated 1951, by the influential artist

Francis Bacon (b. 1909) has recently been acquired by The
Cleveland Museum of Art (Cover and Figure 1).' Simply en
titled Head, it is one of a series on this subject painted by the
artist over the years beginning in the late 1940s. It manifests
Bacon's overwhelming interest in the human figure, often a
portrait, as subject matter. An artist whose fully mature works
emerged in the late 1940s and the 1950s, he is a contemporary
of such American Abstract Expressionists as Jackson Pollock
and Willem de Kooning and their Taschist counterparts on
the Continent, including Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schiilze)
and Georges Mathieu. Bacon's insistence on clinging to the
human image as subject matter links him to a few painters such
as Balthus and Alberto Giacometti in Europe and Willem de
Kooning in the United States. Older masters such as Velaz
quez, Rembrandt, and Vincent van Gogh are the artists he most
admires, however, and it is against them that he measures
himself as a painter.
The Cleveland picture is one of Bacon's earliest paintings
of heads and it may well be a portrait. He almost invariably
uses close friends as the subjects of his portraits, and this can
vas belonged for some years to his friend, the artist Lucian
Freud. He did a full-length portrait of Freud in 1951, and it
might well be that this image was derived from his recollec
tions of his friend. (Bacon almost never works directly from
the model but rather depends on his visual recall and feelings
often supported by photographs.)
Cover and Figure 1. In the painting the figure sits quietly in a dark room; three
Head. Oil on canvas, 24-3/4 x 21 inches (62.9 x 53.3 cm.), straight light lines, forming one end of a rectangle, suggest the
1951. Francis Bacon, British, born 1909.
back of a chair. A cord pull and tassel slant down across the
Purchase, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Bequest. CMA 82.56.
figure's left shoulder. (Such cords are familiar devices in Bacon's
compositions and sometimes are replaced by translucent cur
tains.) The business suit and tie suggest a modern figure, while
what appears to be a loaf-shaped hat is typical of those ap
pearing in his many paintings of popes. Freud is reported to
have said the figure started out as a pope but became the first
portrait in the series that Bacon did of van Gogh.2 However,
in a letter to the author dated 27 August 1983, Freud wrote:
"I bought it the day he did it and quite some time later when
THE BULLETIN OF THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART he was looking at it in my house he said that that was the first
(ISSN 0009-8841), Volume LXX, Number 9, November 1983. time he thought about painting van Gogh. [Italics mine.] I did
Published monthly, except July and August, by The Cleveland Museum of
Art. Subscriptions: $8.00 per year for Museum members; $10.00 per year
not say it was the first in a series."
for non-members. Single copies: $1.00. Copyright 1983 by The Cleveland The many heads that Bacon painted during the late 1940s
Museum of Art. Postmaster send address changes to CMA Bulletin, 11150 and early 1950s are nearly always terribly distorted. This figure
East Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44106. Second-class postage paid at
Cleveland, Ohio. Museum photography by Nicholas Hlobeczy; design by is almost unique in its quiet posture and absence of grimace.
Merald E. Wrolstad; manuscript editing by Jo Zuppan. The apprehensive expression of the eyes and the blurred flesh
354

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 Figure 2. Head I. Oil and tempera on board,
39-1/2 x 29-1/2 inches (100.4 x 74.9 cm.), 1947-48.
Francis Bacon. Richard S. Zeisler Collection.

are enough to indicate fear, while the isolated image and in

dication of a shade imply solitude. Such subtle suggestions
of emotions are often more effective than attempts to portray
them directly. The structure of the head and features can be
seen as shadowed forms beneath the smeared, thick, light pig
ment that covers and blurs them. Typically, Bacon has used
a broad brush to define these forms. The forehead and cheek
bones are clear, but the lower part of the face, including the
nose, appears as if it were in the process of movement or per
haps decomposition.
The few lines implying the back of a chair and the curtain
pull are enough to suggest a room and to define a certain space.
The chair back is clearly behind the figure, while the cord is
in front. One is forced to infer a space of at least three or four
feet to the chair back, and the wall is obviously some distance
behind this object. Thus, with a minimum of means the artist
has placed the figure in a specific and defined space.
From 1945 through the 1950s, Bacon produced some of his
most original and effective images. Head I (Figure 2), in the
Richard S. Zeisler Collection, is one of the most violent and
horrific of the images of screaming heads. The head itself is
suggested entirely by a mouth stretched wide in a terrifying
grimace-revealing terrible rows of teeth with sharp and ex
tended canines-an ear, and an indication of a neck and
shoulders. In contrast to the new Cleveland painting, pure ter
ror is here graphically depicted. Such fearful expressions, with
mouths stretched in terrible screams, indicate a particular con
cern of this artist. In a lengthy interview with David Sylvester
Bacon said:
I've always been moved by the movements of the
mouth and in the teeth. People say that there have
been all sorts of sexual implications, and I was very
obsessed by the actual appearance of the mouth and Monte Carlo, where he indulged a passion for gambling.
teeth...it was a very strong thing at one time.3 The major role of chance in life and art is an idea that has
Later he remarked: "I've always hoped in a sense to be able always intrigued Bacon. He often refers to the importance of
to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset."4 accident in making a picture. Drink or drugs, he believes, may
Born in 1909 of English parents living in Dublin (where his help free the artist as he works, and he agreed with Sylvester's
father was employed as a horse trainer), Bacon did not devote suggestion that it is important to have "the will to lose one's
himself exclusively to painting until he was in his mid-thirties. will,"5 in order to achieve complete freedom. He never does
Alienated from his family - especially his father - at an early sketches or drawings, he explained, because: "the actual tex
age, he lived in Berlin and Paris for two years before going ture, color, the whole way the paint moves, are so accidental
to London in 1928, where he designed interiors and made fur any sketches that I did before could only give a kind of
niture and rugs. He painted intermittently during the 1930s, skeleton... the way the thing might happen."6 Finally, Bacon
but with Three Studiesfor Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion assented that "in allowing chance to work, one allows the
(Figure 3), completed in 1944, he began his career as a serious, deeper levels of the personality to come across." He added that
full-time painter. After World War II until 1950 he lived in "they come over inevitably - they come over without the brain
355

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Figure 3. Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. Oil and pastel on hardboard,
each 37 x 29 inches (94 x 74 cm.), 1944. Francis Bacon. The Tate Gallery, London.

_s_ _

interfering with the inevitability of an image. It seems to come elements - such as pure shapes - have the power to provoke
straight out of what we choose to call the unconscious...."7 affective responses in the viewer. Admittedly, it may only be
Such convictions could well be taken for those of Surrealists the degree of the power of form alone to convey emotions that
such as Andre Breton or Max Ernst in the mid-1920s. he questioned, for he insisted that the image adds another
Despite Bacon's Surrealist-like attitude, he does not seem dimension to a picture giving specific direction to the feelings
to recognize the formal achievements of Surrealists such as aroused in the viewer. 10
Joan Mir6 and Surrealist-influenced Abstract-Expressionists The disquieting Head recently acquired by this Museum
such as Arshile Gorky (who was in fact a Surrealist), Jackson (Cover and Figure 1) demonstrates the artist's point about an
Pollock, Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, and Mark image giving direction to the feelings it arouses. The blurred
Rothko in carrying forward the notion that form alone can features mask specific characteristics that would precisely iden
reveal inner feelings. Bacon has mentioned that he thought tify the model, but the haunted eyes do provide insight to the
of painting as a duality with "abstract painting being an en particular emotions of loneliness and fear.
tirely aesthetic thing. It always remains on one level. It is only Blurring the features of the image was achieved by dragging
really interested in the beauty of its own patterns or its a wide brush or perhaps a rag or painting knife across the
shapes.... I think that abstract artists believe that in these painted surface while it was still wet. In describing such
marks that they're making they are catching all those sorts of methods Bacon added: "I'm certain Rembrandt [also] used
emotions. But I think that, caught in that way, they are too an enormous amount of things."" However, he vehemently
weak to convey anything."8 denied that he is trying to say something about the nature of
Somewhat later, however, he asserted: "when you are paint man "in the way that an artist like Munch was,"'2 insisting
ing somebody, you know that you are... trying to get near not that he is "just trying to make images as accurately off my ner
only to their appearance but also to the way they have affected vous system as I can. I don't even know what half of them mean.
you, because every shape has an implication.9 Furthermore, I'm not saying anything."'3 However, an artist's words often
he agreed that it is an emotional implication. Thus paradox are intended to disguise his meaning and also to deny the critical
ically, he first denied and then acquiesced that formal cliches he finds abhorrent. By insisting that he's not saying
356
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anything, Bacon might well mean that he is not intentionally beings-often caged and thus unable to make contact with
delivering didactic messages. He has explained: other beings -do appear to have certain Existentialist over
One has an intention, but what really happens comes tones. And in a Sartrean spirit, he has commented that human
about in working-that's the reason it's so hard to beings "live through screens -through a screened existence.
talk about it -it actually does come about in the And I sometimes think when people say my work looks violent
working. And the way it works is really by the things that perhaps I have from time to time been able to clear away
that happen. In working you are really following this one or two of the veils or screens."'6
kind of cloud of sensation in yourself, but you don't Formalist critics, predictably, find Bacon's work lacking.
know what it really is. And it's called instinct. And They claim that his images and the formal elements of his paint
one's instinct, whether right or wrong, fixes on certain
ings, such as the handling of paint, are not well enough inte
things that have happened in that activity of applying
the paint to canvas. I think an awful lot of creation is grated to define a single idea or feeling. Also predictably, the
made out of, also, the self criticism of an artist, and stained backgrounds of dark fields of color, divided by thin
very often I think probably what makes one artist rails precisely defined "with a dragging brush," are considered
seem better than another is that his critical sense is
more acute. It may not be that he is more gifted in Figure 4. Head VI. Oil on canvas, 36-3/4 x 30-1/4 inches
any way but just that he has a better critical sense. 14 (93 x 77 cm.), 1949. Francis Bacon.
Bacon's belief in the importance of the artist's critical sense The Arts Council of Great Britain.

is substantiated by his constant reevaluation of his own can

vases and his destruction of those he considers failures.
During the same period that he painted this Museum's new
canvas, Bacon also worked on various other subjects, all con
veying the emotion of fear, often reaching terror. Head VI
(Figure 4), for example, portrays the lower half of a head and
shoulders of what appears to be a screaming pope. The figure

-~~~
is encased in a transparent box, with a cord and tassel, similar
to that in the Cleveland painting, dropping before the head.
Painted in 1949, it precedes by four years the most important
Study after Veldzquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (Figures
5 and 6). All these works - including the Cleveland picture -
are related by their concentration upon a single figure, alone
and terrified.
The isolated human figure was not the only image used by
Bacon to reveal feelings of fear; paintings of dogs and monkeys
(as well as simian-like human figures) are among his most effec
tively frightening works. Dog (Figure 7), painted in 1952, is
typical of such fearsome images. Standing with spraddled legs,
its powerful body is hunched at the shoulders with lowered
head and lolling tongue. It brings to mind visions of mad or
vicious animals like the image of the mad dog in the movie
To Kill a Mockingbird and the sinister, slowly pacing brute
in the horror movie The Omen.
Whatever his subjects, however, Bacon's paintings, especially
of this period, convey impressions of desolation, fear, and
anguish, which has led to his being associated with Ex
istentialist thought by critics such as David Sylvester and
Gregory Batcock.15 Bacon's images of lonely, frightened
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 Figure 5. Study after Veldzquez's Portrait of Pope
Innocent X. Oil on canvas, 60-1/4 x 46-1/2 inches
(153 x 118 cm.), 1953. Francis Bacon. Aberdeen Art
Gallery and Industrial Museum, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Figure 6. Pope Innocent X. Oil on canvas, 55-1/8 x 47-1/4

inches (140 x 120 cm.). Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez,
Spanish, 1599-1660. Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Rome.

I _

the most successful parts of his paintings. The explicit image, While it is true th
it is insisted, embodies a general and uninteresting emotion. 17 largely upon subjec
Bacon's obsessional painting of distorted heads and features elicit an appropria
does manifest his concern, which was unfashionable.in the paintings tended to
1950s, for subject matter in his painting. In this respect, as in ordinary subjects in
others, he is close to Surrealism, which formalist critics deride is nothing intrinsic
for its concentration on subject matter-albeit from the or a
busines seated
unconscious-at the expense of form. Bacon's flat, thinly jects that makes t
painted, dark backgrounds do indeed contrast with active im Museum's new pai
ages developed with thick pigment, resulting in a lack of in ful in itself, but t
tegration of image and ground. What is more, Bacon seems haunted expression
to be aware of this problem; for although it is usually assumed Appropriately, Bac
that he glazes his paintings because he likes the accidental edies, Shakespeare,
mingling of the painted image and the capricious reflections Gogh's letters. His
of passing viewers, he remarked to David Sylvester that he did belief in some grea
not want the reflections, he only felt that they should be of "the shortness o
tolerated, adding that "the glass helps to unify the picture."'8 and death,"19 but
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 Figure 7. Dog. Oil on canvas, 78-1/4 x 54-1/4 inches
(198.8 x 137.8 cm), 1952. Francis Bacon.
Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
William A. M. Burden Fund.

be optimistic and totally without hope." That is, one may

recognize that existence is without absolute value, that life is
ephemeral, but that human beings are impelled by their very
nature to invent values to which they subscribe for more or
less long periods of time. Thus, Bacon's pessimism concern
ing life and the world is balanced by his optimism about
humanity's instinctive drive to order its environment and create
values which give meaning - however temporary - to life.
11

r .I

Such open speculation is normally detested by artists, and

Bacon retaliates by declaring that he is only trying to copy what
he sees and denying that he is trying to say anything about man's
place in the universe. Faced with similar interpretations of his
work, Giacometti also denied any such meanings for his work
and held such conjectures to be "crass."20 However, granting
the inadequacy of logical sentences to encompass their con
tent, the images do exist and almost invariably evoke such re
actions which are reinforced by Bacon's spontaneous state
ments.
The painting now in the Cleveland collection is one of the
most poignantly expressive of the small, early heads (which
rank high among his most successful works), achieving that
expression without the dramatic grimaces of many of the early
images or the violent distortions of the later figures. It is a work
which comes very close to realizing Bacon's stated goal of
making portraits "which really have nothing to do with what
is called the illustrational facts of the image,... ."21 but which
poignantly convey a strong impression of the subject's
appearance.
EDWARD B. HENNING
Chief Curator of Modern Art
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 13.
6. Ibid., p. 20.
7. Ibid., p. 120.
8. Ibid., pp. 58-59.
1. CMA 82.56 Head, oil on canvas, 24-3/4 x 21 inches (62.99.xIbid.,
53.3 p. 130.
10. Ibid.,
cm.), 1951. Francis Bacon, British, born 1909. Purchase, Leonard C. p. 60.
Hanna Jr. Bequest. Ex collections: Lucian Freud, London; Mrs. 11. Ibid., p. 90.
Brenda
12. Ibid., p. 82.
Bomford, Aldbourne, England. Exhibitions: London, 1952: Institute
of Contemporary Arts, Recent Trends in Realist Painting, no. 2 13.(listed
Ibid.
incorrectly as Head 1949); London, 1959: Hanover Gallery, Bacon,
14. Ibid., p. 149.
no. 1 (reproduced); Turin, 1961: Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, La
15. Gregory Batcock, "Francis Bacon: First Major New Gallery
Pittura Moderna Stranieri nelle Collezione Private Italiane, no. Arts
Show," 153 Magazine, XLIII (November 1968), 45 ff.
(reproduced); Turin, 1962: Palazzo della Promotrice al Valentino, L'In
16. Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, p. 82.
contro di Torino. Publications: Ronald Alley and John Rothenstein,
17. E.g., see Michael Fried, "Bacon's Achievement," Arts Magazine,
Francis Bacon (New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1964), p. xxxvi
50, (September
no. 1962), 28.
31, repr.; Weltkunst, XXIX (1 July 1959), 14. 18. Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, p. 87.
2. Alley and Rothenstein, Francis Bacon, p. 50. 19. Ibid., p. 80.
20.(Lon
3. David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 1962-1979 Ibid., p. 82.
don: Thames and Hudson, 1981), p. 72. 21. Ibid., p. 105.
359
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