Quotes

You see, painting has now become, or all art has now become completely a game, by which man distracts himself. What is fascinating actually is, that it's going to become much more difficult for the artist, because he must really deepen the game to become any good at all.

An illustrational form tells you through the intelligence immediately what the form is about, whereas a non-illustrational form works first upon sensation and then slowly leaks back into the fact.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

I don’t think people are born artists; I think it comes from a mixture of your surroundings, the people you meet, and luck.

I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.

I need the city; I need to know there are people around me strolling, arguing, f**king—living, and yet I go out very rarely; I stay here in my cage.

I should have been, I don’t know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance.

All artists are vain, they long to be recognised and to leave something to posterity. They want to be loved, and at the same time they want to be free. But nobody is free.

Some artists leave remarkable things which, a 100 years later, don’t work at all. I have left my mark; my work is hung in museums, but maybe one day the Tate Gallery or the other museums will banish me to the cellar…you never know.

Painting gave meaning to my life which without it it would not have had.

Picasso is the reason why I paint. He is the father figure, who gave me the wish to paint.

Picasso was the first person to produce figurative paintings which overturned the rules of appearance; he suggested appearance without using the usual codes, without respecting the representational truth of form, but using a breath of irrationality instead, to make representation stronger and more direct; so that form could pass directly from the eye to the stomach without going through the brain.

Picasso was one of that genius caste which includes Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Van Gogh and above all Velázquez.

Velázquez found the perfect balance between the ideal illustration which he was required to produce, and the overwhelming emotion he aroused in the spectator.

Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people’s plates.

Before I start painting I have a slightly ambiguous feeling: happiness is a special excitement because unhappiness is always possible a moment later.

You could say that I have no inspiration, that I only need to paint.

The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure; it’s a little like making love, the physical act of love.

Works on Paper

Over seventy works on paper were found in Bacon's Reece Mews studio and these are now in the collection of the Hugh Lane Gallery. They are among the most important discoveries of the project. In all the interviews Bacon gave from around 1962 onwards, he denied that he made any preparatory drawings before he started to paint. Some of his close friends knew that he produced drawings and even owned some of these works, but they followed Bacon's wish to keep them out of the public domain. The Hugh Lane collection of drawings is one of the most comprehensive and provides a good record of the type of works Bacon was producing from the 1930s to the 1980s. Collectively, they provide new perspectives on Bacon's thought processes and working methods. All the works are unsigned and most are undated. Most are monochromatic. Some can be related to finished paintings whereas with others the links are more tenuous.

Materials

Some two thousand samples of Bacon's painting materials were found in the Reece Mews studio. These include hundreds of used paint tubes, jars of loose pigment, paintbrushes, utensils, tin cans, sticks of pastel, pieces of fabric, empty bottles of turpentine, cans of spray paint and of fixative, tins of household paint and countless roller sponges. No artist's palette was found in the studio and the artist appears to have used just about anything he could find as a substitute. Even the walls of the studio itself were used to mix and test paints. From early on in his artistic career, Bacon tried out various materials in his paintings including aerosol cans of car paint, sand, pastel, dust and cotton wool. He also appears to have applied paint with the plastic lids from paint tubes and the open ends of bottles found in the studio.

Several pairs of thick corduroy trousers were found in the studio. Many of these were cut up into pieces, which Bacon used to pattern his paintings. The imprint of corduroy is evident in many of his paintings, including Study for Portrait of John Edwards, 1989. Imprints from corduroy are also evident on the door of the Reece Mews studio suggesting that Bacon applied paint to the door, printed the corduroy and then applied it to the canvas. Bacon also used cashmere sweaters ribbed socks and cotton flannels to similar effect. Three towelling dressing gowns were also found in the studio. It is possible that Bacon used these to print onto canvas also.

Cut-out arrows are amongst the surprise discoveries in Bacon's studio. The thick deposits of paint on both sides of these arrows suggest that Bacon used these either to paint around or else to imprint the shape of an arrow directly onto the canvas. Two cut-out heads of George Dyer, one in colour and one in black and white have been found in the studio. Due to the presence of a number of pin holes in these items and the paint around the outlines, it seems likely that they were used to trace the profile on to the canvas.

Photographs by John Deakin

The photographs of Vogue photographer John Deakin (1912-1972) were particularly important to the artist and over 120 Deakin photographs and a collection of negatives have been found in the Reece Mews studio. Many of these were used as the basis for Bacon's portraits of George Dyer, Peter Lacy, Henrietta Moraes, Isabel Rawthshorne and Lucian Freud. While some of the photographs are in poor condition, their visual impact is still enormous. Many have heavy accretions of paint, and some are torn, crumpled or distorted and held in place with paperclips. Bacon was acutely aware of the way smudged fingerprints and footprints could change an image irrevocably.

Photographs

Photography played a major role in Bacon's work, and almost one quarter of the material found in the studio is of a photographic nature. Many of these photographs are of Bacon, his friends and various other subjects. During his lifetime, Bacon accepted only a handful of commissions. From the early 1960s he chose his closest friends as sitters, preferring to work not from life but from their photographs.

Slashed Canvases

One hundred slashed canvases were found in Bacon's studio. The larger ones were stacked up against the walls and windows, while some of the smaller ones were found piled on shelves or discarded on the floor. These works, although destroyed, often show what a Bacon canvas looks like before completion. His unorthodox techniques are revealed in their raw state. The practice of destroying canvases is not unusual among artists. Apparently, Bacon destroyed the small works himself and John Edwards destroyed the larger ones at Bacon's request. The slashed canvases span some five decades of the artist's career, with the earliest known work dating from around 1946. In most cases, a painting was taken to a relatively advanced stage before a canvas was destroyed.

Over half the canvases found in the Reece Mews Studio are in a small format (approximately 35.5cm x 30cm). Some were used as palettes or have initial preparatory layers, whereas others have portrait studies in varying degrees of completion. The artist may have used other canvases to test paint colours and techniques or possibly to clean his brushes. The human figures in Bacon's paintings tend to be two-thirds to three-quarters life size so the majority of his large paintings are of full-length figures. Consequently, the smaller paintings tend to be of heads. However, the head area of every portrait study found in the studio, has been cut out. As the images generally only show a small area of the neck, edges of the face and head, it is frequently difficult to identify the sitter.