Experimental Sound : Francis Bacon Research

/
0 Comments
To get a little bit of background knowledge and try to get an idea of Bacon's point of view when painting The Screaming Pope I decided to look into his history.

Life

  • Francis Bacon, the artist, was born in Dublin on 28 October, 1909, the second of five children.
  • He left home at the age of sixteen and went to live in Berlin.
  • In 1928 he decided to become an artist after seeing an exhibition of Picasso’s work in Paris.
  • His early work (1929-1944) was influenced by Surrealism but did not gain much critical success.
  • In 1944 Bacon exhibited ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’ to a public outcry due to its horrific imagery. This was the key painting in the development of Francis Bacon’s work.
  • After painting ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’ he destroyed most of his early work as he believed that it failed to communicate the way he felt about the world.
  • ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’ introduces many of the characteristics associated with Francis Bacon’s art: mutilated imagery, a sense of anxiety and alienation, the triptych format, antique gilt frames with glass and subjects that relate to the Crucifixion and Greek mythology.
  • Bacon never painted from life - he always worked from photographs.
  • Photographic references that Bacon frequently referred to were Velazquez's'Portrait of Innocent X', the wounded nurse from the film 'The Battleship Potemkin', Muybridge’s ‘The Human Figure in Motion’, Clark's 'Positioning in Radiography'and medical textbooks that illustrated diseases of the mouth.
  • Bacon's art was seen as a metaphor for the corruption of the human spirit in the post World War Two era.
  • Bacon often painted variations of the same subject and sometimes revisited certain subjects many years later. ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’has a later version painted in 1988.
  • Francis Bacon died of a heart attack in Madrid in 1992.

The Screaming Pope

  • Painted in 1953
  • Bacon worked from reproductions and never saw the original painting by Velazquez. 
  • He painted about forty five variations based around the subject of the Pope - The Screaming Pope being one.
  • Possibly inspired by Picasso for producing variations on a work from the past.



About Post Author

Morbi leo risus, porta ac consectetur ac, vestibulum at eros. Fusce dapibus, tellus ac cursus commodo, tortor mauris condimentum nibh, ut fermentum massa justo sit amet risus.

You may also like

No comments:

About Me

My Photo
Lauren Fox
Third year at UCA studying Digital Film and Screen Arts
View my complete profile

Popular Posts