spotlight
FRANCIS BACON
(1909 – 1992) Irish-born, Francis Bacon was an artist who came
le traject,(c1900)
ROMAINE BROOKS (1874 – 1970) Born to great wealth yet raised in the direst of
circumstances, Romaine Brooks parentage consisted of an alcoholic father who abandoned his family, an emotionally-abusive mother and a mentally ill brother, for whom she would take care for throughout her life. Indifferent to Brooks’ needs, her mother fostered her to a tenement family in New York, abandoning her physically, emotionally and in the end, financially as well, leaving her destitute for years. It was an experience she would carry with her, long after her mother passed. Though in the end, Brooks would inherit a vast fortune from her family, money that would sustain her throughout her life. Like many of her lesbian contemporaries,
Brooks would also challenge the societal standards of her time by adopting an androgynous appearance, defying the norms regarding how women should look and behave. It was a concept that would carry into her artwork too, as she defied the favored artistic
to his chosen medium later in life. A shy child, Bacon had a complex and often painful relation- ship with his father, who had difficulty accepting his effeminate nature. His father’s way of dealing with that discomfort was to reportedly have him horsewhipped to “toughen him up.” Openly and “unapologetically” gay as an adult, he would paint sporadically during the late 1920s and early 1930s, working as an interior decorator and designer of furniture and rugs. The artist Roy de Maistre, one of his patrons and someone who would become a mentor to Bacon, encouraged him to take up painting in oils. Bacon would model his early work after Picasso and the surrealists, whose work he had seen on one of his trips to Paris. Following that surrealist model, his bold,
trends such as Cubism and Fauvism—forging her own path and creating a unique aesthetic—though it is suggested that her work was heavily influenced by the artists Charles Conder, Walter Sickert, and James McNeill Whistler. Her execution too, was as unique as her subject matter, rendering her subjects in muted palettes consisting primarily of black, white, and various subtle shades of gray, intermingled sparingly with ochres and umbers. She explored gender and sexuality deeply
in her distinctive portraiture, which by her own admission reflected her emotional experi- ences and history; “When all was finished, and I surveyed the array of sad introspective figures recalling as they did my own moods, I had a strong
revulsion of feelings. How was it possible to expose in such fashion one’s inner self to the world? I felt no less nude than were the nudes on the walls. Were it possible I would have given orders then and there to have my paintings taken down and sent back to my studio.”
figurative works bordered on the grotesque. The emotionally-charged, raw images conveyed a sense of deep human emotion, chronicling the bleak conditions faced by many around him. It is noted that the 1971 suicide of his lover, George Dyer, heavily influenced Bacon, his art following that tragedy would become more sombre, inward- looking and preoccupied with the passage of time and death. Bacon’s unique approach to figurative painting was deeply steeped in the traditions of old masters painting and they were a constant inspiration. Perhaps his most famous influence was that of Diego Valesquez and his Portrait of Pope Innocent X (c1850), which it is said was the basis for his arguably most famous series of “Screaming Popes.” Of his work and art, he said, “Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence – a reconcentration... tearing away the veils that fact acquires through time.”
portrait of pope innocent x (c1850) 20 RAGE monthly | MARCH 2018
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