Whereas Bacon’s main subject and primal obsession is the human figure, radically reshaped and engaged in an activity that, before 1969, was punishable in England – and quite often was punished – by criminal prosecution, social obloquy and jail. Because of the sorting out of the famously filthy mess that was Bacon’s studio at Reece Mews – the piles and sticky avalanches of photos, books, clipped newsprint, booze-stained scribbles on the verge of becoming drawings, squished paint tubes and every imaginable ingredient of clutter that covered the horizontal and vertical surfaces, tables and walls, like some illegible compost in which, like moulds or somewhat alien life-forms, his future pictures were brewing and his past ones decaying. Such was the context of Bacon’s most famous paintings, the Popes, for – especially to an Irishman of Bacon’s generation – the Pope, not the king or any prime minister or even a dictator’s chief of police, is the ultimate authority figure. Francis Bacon’s fame is best assessed retrospectively, Robert Hughes says This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday August 30 2008 on p16 of the Features & reviews section. read more
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