Bacon was obsessed by animals lifelong. Rawness. Beastliness. Fearsomeness. The way they lived. The way they died. The way they preyed upon each other.
Francis Bacon
Posted inBooks
Step Into the Colony Room, the Raucous Haunt of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and the YBAs
Tales from the Colony Room, an oral history of London’s most infamous bar, delves into the artistic collaborations, affections, cruelties, and regrets of the club’s patrons.
Posted inArt
The Unsparing Pages of Francis Bacon
Almost 30 years after his death, the unabated edginess of Bacon’s paintings, and the dark literary sources informing them, put the lie to our self-mythologizing.
Posted inBooks
A Multi-faceted Look at Francis Bacon’s Psychology
The five essays in Bacon and the Mind: Art, Neuroscience and Psychology call us to grapple with an artist whose life and work were anything but simple.
Posted inNews
Brooklyn Museum Is Trying to Sell a Francis Bacon Painting the Artist Wanted Destroyed
During his lifetime, Bacon wrote the museum that “It was a throw-out and it depresses me […] that it has years later found its way onto the art market and I would prefer if it were not exhibited.”
Posted inArt
Dark Humor Abounds at the Fine Art Print Fair
Much of the artworks for sale emanated a darkly satirical message this past weekend.
Posted inArt
Painterly Visions of Being All Too Human
At best, All Too Human shows well known artists at an intriguing new angle and revisits lesser known names, but at worst makes some perplexing curatorial choices which defy its own set of rules, stretching relevance through some optimistic inclusions.
Posted inIn Brief
How a Lovers’ Quarrel Led to Francis Bacon’s 1968 Arrest for Marijuana Possession
A tape recently made public reveals that Bacon was busted by the Chelsea drug squad after a feud with his lover George Dyer.
Posted inNews
Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: Spanish police arrested seven people for Francis Bacon heist, a Picasso thief preyed on a Chelsea gallery, and an artist lost his head after someone stole his guillotine sculpture.
Posted inNews
Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: a trove of taxidermy animals went missing, five Francis Bacons were stolen, and a gang of crooked auction house porters went on trial.
Posted inArt
Seeking the Real at Art Basel Miami Beach
So where were they? An Inside Art column published in The New York Times a week before the opening of Art Basel Miami Beach dangled the prospect of a more inclusive fair this year, one that would feature “A Focus on Female Artists,” as the headline put it.
Posted inArt
The Calmer, Contemplative Mood of Francis Bacon’s Late Paintings
Over the past several years the Gagosian Gallery in New York City has mounted shows described as “museum quality.”