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Francis Bacon's Work Relied on 'Gimmick'

By Harry Kimball, Newser Staff

Posted May 20, 2009 1:37 PM CDT

(Newser) – Francis Bacon’s paintings still have the ability to shock, but beneath that initial thrill lies a consistent, even amateur, formula that “had grown stagnant by 1965,” Jerry Saltz writes in New York in previewing a retrospective opening today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “The calculated pictorial repetitiousness and lack of formal development wear thin.”

Upon review, Saltz writes, “Bacon strikes you not as an artist unafraid of the darkest within himself but as an artist who didn’t go to that source enough.” Most of all, Bacon’s adherence to classical painting technique hampered his ambition. The man who said that “only by going too far can you go far enough” was bettered by abstract painters who “went further” by “giving up all the conventions of painting.”

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (1)]

Francis Bacon. (AP Photo)

Francis Bacon's 'Man in Blue VI.' (AP Photo)

Diptych: Study of the Human Body--From a Drawing by Ingres (©cliff1066)

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What’s especially poignant about Bacon is that he knew he’d built his own prison. As early as 1963, he referred to “my rigidness.” He talked about the “drawback” of his style and how he used painterly tics as a “device.” - Jerry Saltz

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COMMENTS

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Showing 3 of 4 comments

Doctor-Zaius

May 20, 2009 11:33 AM CDT

But to pretend to paint what goes on in the mind and soul takes balls the size of New Hampshire and predicates itself upon the foolishness of the Art Patron.

Robert_Dada

May 20, 2009 11:24 AM CDT

To paint what can be seen in front of your face takes technical talent. To paint what goes on in the mind and soul takes technical talent and brilliance.

Timinator2K

May 20, 2009 8:42 AM CDT

"...was bettered by abstract painters who “went further” by “giving up all the conventions of painting.” Translation: they painted the graphic equivalent of white noise and, VERY conventionally and hypocritically, still called it "art." If I take a diarhea dump on a canvas, guess what? It ain't liquidized shit, its an artitistic statement, performance art piece AND a sense of smell sensation for the bargain price of $2.5M.

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