Assembling 45 paintings from the course of his 60-year career, the Royal Academy’s new exhibition, “Francis Bacon: Man and Beast”, is a disturbing trip through the darkest chambers of Bacon’s genius, as the viewer is abrasively confronted with the question that haunts his work: just how animal are we?
Francis Bacon, Study for Bullfight No. 1, 1969, oil on canvas, 198 x 147.5 cm/77.9 x 58.07 in. Private collection
© The Estate of Francis Bacon. ARR, DACS/Artimage 2021. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Though titled Head I , the Royal Academy’s opening gambit obfuscates the human form, as flesh becomes a pallid, leathery mass dissipating into the dark depths of the canvas. The one resoundingly human feature comes in the faint curvature of an ear, but it is rather the fang protruding from the subject’s bestial howl that draws the gaze of the viewer. Indeed, while scholarship on Francis Bacon (1909-1992) tends towards his depiction of abject figures entrapped in claustrophobic interiors—a trope apparent in Head I —an essential tenet that Michael Peppiatt (co-curator with Sarah Lea) believes to be “barely explored” is Bacon’s obsessive preoccupation with the animal that lurks beneath man’s veneer of civility: fear, lust, and rage are repeatedly highlighted in Bacon’s ruthless approach to the human condition. In our dark and troubled age, and with figurative art back in vogue, Francis Bacon, and this exhibition, is one for our modern times.
Installation view of the "Francis Bacon: Man and Beast" exhibition at the Royal…
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