In the hype of special exhibitions, every now and then a show comes along that’s worth seeing once, twice and perhaps even three times. Francis Bacon: A Century Retrospective open at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts through August 20, 2009 is one such show, where the artist’s process is painstakingly deconstructed. With an admirable collection of 66 grotesquely, fantastical and vivid paintings, color schemes are cohesive, against the telling of an artist’s life. Accompanying photography provides an intimate glimpse into Bacon’s personal struggles and how they translate into his provocative work of the flesh. Bacon, set the precedent for a generation of painters who challenge social mores within composition, most notably in Damien Hirst’s faux laboratories. Bacon’s torrid love affairs that ended in tragedy inspired his subjects and depictions mired with his angst, and the biographical nature of the show provides insight how this played into work in pieces like The Crucifixion. While this show has received much coverage and Bacon’s work criticism, some of his later work are subjective, but here they are given a fair shot.
New York Magazine provides an excellent primer on Bacon, his suffering, and his body of work:
Endless liaisons with rent boys and society types followed, until Bacon’s predator-prey notion of love and his “desire to suffer” reached new heights, in 1952. At the age of 43, he met a former RAF pilot, Peter Lacy, in London’s Soho. They spent a lot of time in Tangier, a refuge for gay men looking for freedom. “I’d never really fallen in love with anyone until then,” Bacon said. “Of course, it was the most total disaster from the start.” Bacon couldn’t live with or without him: “Being in love in that extreme way,” he said, “being totally obsessed by someone, is like having some dreadful disease. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.” They experimented with the far reaches of S&M. The end was horrid, too. On the day before his first Tate retrospective opened, in May 1962, Bacon learned Lacy had been found dead, almost surely from drinking.
Less than two years later, Bacon met George Dyer—reportedly when Dyer broke into his studio to rob him. For the next seven years the relationship rocketed up and down, then history repeated itself. On October 25, 1971, the day before Bacon’s retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris opened, Dyer overdosed and died in their Paris hotel room. Bacon, then 61, was again devastated. No wonder he talked about “the destruction” of love.
The exhibit has traveled from the Tate, to the Prado Gallery in Madrid, Spain. We took a special tour thank to our insider at the Met who led us through the gallery after hours, giving us ample time to digest Bacon and the suffering that left us with art for the ages.
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