Oh my gosh it's been SO long since I've last blogged, not having a secure internet connection and constantly searching for a job/work experience whilst also tanning really takes up a lot of time. I have been keeping up to date though, last week I went to see the Francis Bacon exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW.
RIGHT so, anyone who knows me knows that Francis Bacon is my all time fave person in the world, he is the messiah of the art world, I love everything about him and everything he ever does. When I first discovered I liked art in year 10 and I had to research a new artist, I had no idea what to do or any artist that wasn't Picasso, so I vividly remember looking through an ELLE magazine and finding a piece of Francis Bacon and literally falling in love. I thought I'd like discovered him (he's actually been dead for years), and when I did my project on him I thought 'God, my art teacher is going to be like, 'who is this guy?''. Turns out everyone already knew who he was, but from then on wards I've always had a little art crush.
I was on the plane to Sydney, reading the in flight magazine and I saw that Francis Bacon had an exhibition going on and I almost died. After 5 weeks of being here I finally go and see it and it met all my expectations. And more.
The curator insights next to the paintings were so amazing, they made me look at his work in such a different way. His Pope series has reoccurring themes, like the boxed in pope who appears to be screaming, but the open mouth may show suffocating instead, as they're trapped behind the curtain/box and it feels claustrophobic instead of terrifying like many people believe.
Bacon clearly has a fascination with the human body, and the exhibition really shows this. His paintings of Heads are animalistic and distorted, they are almost identical to the Study of a Baboon Head. He studied the human body in great depth, with Michelangelo and Muybridge being big influences. The definition of the bodies he paints, and the muscles, is obviously reminiscent of Michelangelo, and the cabinet of 'influential material' found in his studio is very interesting into seeing how Bacon's mind worked.
'Picasso is the reason why I paint. He is the father figure, who gave me the wish to paint.' - Picasso is a great influence on Bacon. The pieces where I can see this influence the most are the brightly colored large paintings with dissolving pink bodies in the middle of them, best seen in Studies of a Human Body (1970), where the lilac backgrounds contrast with the mess of flesh in the middle. These paintings, to me, are beautiful.
It's easy to understand why Bacon has been described as a 'violent' artist - his thickly applied, raw painting technique, dark colours and ambiguous images are often seen as dark, however very little of his paintings actually have violent imagery in them. When knowing the context of Bacon's life (abused as a teenager, being gay and unaccepted, involvement with petty criminals, the death of two of his lovers on the eve of his art shows) it's not difficult to see why the content of Bacon's art may be of a disturbed nature.
It was actually amazing getting to see my favourite artists work. I've been waiting 5 years to see all his work in one place, and finally it's happened. I would literally recommend it to anyone
