Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon was born to an English family in Dublin, Ireland on 28 October 1909. He was known for his figurative painting that often portrayed themes of isolation and suffering.

Bacon left home at the age of sixteen and spent two years traveling. When he chanced upon Pablo Picasso’s exhibition in Paris, he was instantly inspired to start painting. Although Bacon initially intended to establish himself as an interior decorator and furniture designer, he eventually turned to painting exclusively.

Bacon’s provocative and disturbing paintings were not sudden sparks of inspiration. As a teen, he often came into violent arguments with his chauvinistic and severe father. His decision to leave hime was triggered by unappeasable differences regrading his sexuality. Despite a difficult relationship, he had in fact admitted to being sexually attracted to his own father. 

Personal life aside, Bacon could not hold a stable job. He often quit due to boredom or misconduct. He managed to get by with a pitiful amount of his mother’s trust funds, dodging his rent and petty thefts.

All these constant reminders of failure, coupled with the destructive relationships with the lovers in his life, resulted in these twisted paintings that reveals his tortured soul.    

Bacon’s paintings usually involve a single male figure situated in a small enclosed space as if trapped in a solitary hell.

“Three Studies For Figures At The Base of a Crucifixion” and “Study After Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X” (also known as The Screaming Pope) are two of his more popular works. 

“Three Studies For Figures At The Base of a Crucifixion”, a triptych painted by Bacon in 1944 was the big break for him. 

The painting was his interpretation of the three goddesses of vengeance (Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone) that originated from Greek mythology.

The goddesses’ responsibilities were to punish crimes that were beyond human justice. The distorted figures imitate the corruption of human spirit and Bacon’s extreme loathing towards man’s humanity to man.

“The Screaming Pope” painted by Bacon in 1953, was regarded as his masterpiece and the inspiration behind the painting has intrigued many scholars. 

The painting I have uploaded is only one of the forty-five paintings that Bacon did between 1951-1965. His obsession with the subject was so severe that it was rumored he had to inflict violence on himself to force himself to stop the study of Velazquez’s popes. 

Inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s transformation of artworks he admired by Eugene Delacroix and many others, Bacon often replaced the pope’s head with the screaming face of the injured nurse destroyed by soldiers’ gunfire on the Odessa Steps in Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin. This transformation overthrew the idea of power and self-assurance portrayed by Velazquez. The screaming mouth, set apart from other facial features and isolated from any form of communication, shows experiential agony. Bacon accentuates human vulnerability and loss of faith by rendering space frames that makes the figures look as if it’s “enclosed in the wretched capsule of the human individual”.