Encounters With Friendship, Death And Memory: 'Francis Bacon: Human Presence’ At The National Portrait Gallery
★★★★★
In his final interview, Francis Bacon reflected on the ‘violence’ in his artistic corpus and insisted that life itself was violent, not so much his paintings. “Violence is a part of human nature” he asserted, and "even within the most beautiful landscape, in trees, under the leaves, the insects are eating each other”. It comes as no surprise then, that the portraits of life and death which Bacon created were riddled with this dichotomy – this quarrel between the beautiful and the violent. The National Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition, ‘Francis Bacon: Human Presence’, curated by Rosie Broadley, skilfully guides us through this dialectic in Bacon’s work, and manages to fashion a chronotope of the artist’s encounters with friendship, love, grief, and ultimately – death.
Bacon’s Orwellian stare is projected upon the first entrance of the exhibition, and the milieu of his portraiture is instantly crafted; we feel passive, subjected, and observed. Once we meet Bacon’s eye, we become a sitter – and there is something lovely about this sense of connection; a detail which amplifies the intimacy of the experience. From this point onwards, the connection between artist and viewer is established, and the journey through Bacon’s life resonates on a personal note.
At the heart of the exhibition are zoomorphic and spectral portraits of Bacon’s friends and lovers that offer intimate moments of nakedness and vulnerability. The ephemeral qualities of Bacon’s Triptychs in particular shone, perfectly demonstrating the artist's ability to capture the fleeting dynamics of human expression, those which sometimes go unnoticed by the naked eye. Broadley, the lead curator, describes Bacon’s reckonings with memory not just as recollections, but as ‘pulsations [and] emanations’. Memory is unstable, and often unreliable, an inescapable reality that bleeds into the works, which communicate a likeness rather than a replica. Imagining Bacon’s relationship with experience and memory is poignant, as the artist's complex portraits of his companions instead become complex memories of companionship. This collides wonderfully with the exhibition itself as we become digested in the artist’s wild spectrum of emotion, and for me personally, it took time to untangle myself from the journey I felt I embarked on viewing this exhibition.
Both Bacon’s arresting works and Broadley’s intentional curation make the exhibition deserving of an extended viewing. Only then we are granted with an understanding of Bacon’s selfhood and in turn an insight into his inspiration, where we are reminded of the artistic genealogy which precedes him. Allusions to Rembrandt, Blake, and Velazquez punctuate Bacon’s work, and the exhibition does not shy away from tracing this history. Rembrandt’s Self Portrait with Beret makes an appearance, as does the life mask of William Blake, next to Bacon’s study of the latter poet. The homage to Bacon’s artistic influences resonates as a mode of recognition, a way of allowing Bacon a place in the historical canon.
The exhibition really leans into emotives, whether it's the aforementioned allocation of artistic status, or the personal archival letters and photos of Bacon — it is hard to not feel moved, if not teary at the panoramic view of a man’s personal and creative life. Broadley reminds us of the constant ‘threat of arrest’ plaguing the artist due to his homosexuality, which reinstates us within the tension of the mid Twentieth Century, particularly the restraint of self expression. Viewing the exhibition through this lens of self-denial is confronting; the restraint of queer love reveals itself upon the canvases, and the paintings are transformed once again into portraits of loss, as well as love. This brings us to the final work in the exhibition, it is impossible to review Bacon: Human Presence, without reflecting on The Black Triptych, 1973. These harrowing paintings account the moments before, during and after George Dyer’s suicide – his former lover and principal model. It is a gut wrenching culmination of the journey we as viewers experience, but a localising one nonetheless. If there’s a point of true connection and understanding with Bacon during this exhibition, it is at this moment we fully comprehend it. Mortality stares back at you from this Triptych and Bacon’s loss of his love grasps you. However, you also come face to face with the loss of Bacon himself, coming to terms with the finality of his artistic catalogue. It is a tragic but spectacular finale to the exhibition.
Ultimately, it would feel unnatural to allot Bacon: Human Presence anything less than five stars. It is a dynamic and immersive experience, one that locates you as Bacon’s subject, and somewhat, his friend. The gravity of personal loss is emboldened – but friendship, love and artistic passion negate this. We as viewers are reminded that work as influential and robust as Bacon’s, would not exist without difficult and harrowing experiences; whether that be operating under the surveillance of homophobic infrastructures, or losing those that are closest to you. For that experience - we are left only being able to thank Bacon for his work, and to commend the curatorial team for allowing us this voyage through his life. "By imagining, you transgress all taboos, anything is possible” Bacon said, and you leave this exhibition understanding this sentiment; for the artist, creation was escape; wild imagination allowed him a freedom which the dystopia of the Twentieth Century had the potential to inhibit. His absence in our world does not go unnoticed, but the liberation his work represents continues to inspire generations of artists, allowing them a framework of unrestrained expression in art.
See the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London until 19th January 2025.
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