Bacon rejected Abstraction because, in his view, it communicated nothing. His dominant and consistent subject was the human face and body, though he rarely suggested any real space.
Note:
In the late-1940s and early 1950s, Existential art drew on
the popular philosophy that grew up around the writings of French philosophers Jean- Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Existentialist themes of alienation, as well as angst in the face of the human condition had a significant impact on the visual arts. Existentialism was also an influence on some American Abstract Expressionists and individual painters and sculptors like the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti and Bacon’s friend Lucien Freud.
Study After Velázquez’s Portrait of
Pope Innocent X (1953) Bacon transformed the classic portrait of Pope Innocent X by the Spanish Baroque artist Diego Velázquez (see Chapter 9, Fig. 9.6) into a screaming figure surrounded by a cage-like frame (Fig. 18.12).
Figure 18.13 Cutting with photographic illustration of the screaming nurse in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, by Francis Bacon, 16 x 17 cm, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin.
Note:
Figure 18.12 Study After Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953, by Francis Bacon, oil on canvas, 153 × 118 cm, Des Moines Art Center, Iowa.
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The friendship between Bacon and Lucian Freud was particularly
important for the School of London as well as for both artists’ artistic development. They first met in the mid-1940s, and for the next 30 years they saw each other nearly every day. They critiqued each other’s work and painted noted portraits of each other.
