Bacon 2 Process, Studio Practice and Work Ethic

Of all the artists I’ve talked about, I've found Bacon to have the most interesting things to say about painting.

In his words his goal was trying to “capture the feeling of existence. Without commenting on it.”

He was fond of saying that “one cannot talk about painting, only around painting.”

He talked about his painting method as trying to "deform the figure into truth," and “trap the image at the most alive point.”

His goal was to make the work look like “it had just come off the nervous system.”

His work definitely came from his existentialist leanings and hedonistic lifestyle, But I think that's not the key to why his work is so great.

Working with Pain

He had an insane work ethic and was apparently a very punctual person, despite the chaos in his life and depicted in his work.

As I mentioned in the last post, bacon was a big partier and a heavy drinker. He'd go out for a night on the town and get wasted multiple times a week. Maybe every night.

But the reason he is Francis Bacon is because in the morning, while everyone else would be sleeping off their hang overs, he'd start painting.

Michael peppiatt once asked bacon how he doesn't get hung over. Bacon looks at him like he's crazy and says "I do get hungover."

The pain and discomfort of the hangover was part of the routine to Bacon. Feeling that way kind of aligned with his philosophy about art and he was able to integrate that into his practice. It's kind of wholistic in a sense.

By the way, I don't recommend this routine. The point is just that he had one.

Chance Accident and Control

Chance and accident were another big part of bacon's practice.

In an interview with David Sylvester Bacon said he would mark out where he wanted the composition to be and then leave it up to chance and accident. "whatever ends up working, works when I feel like I'm not in control."

The downside of working this way however, is that bacon tended to overwork his paintings.

His solution to this problem was to destroy those paintings.

He had a deal with his London Gallery where they would pay him a good amount of money per painting (sounds nice.)

There was this lady who worked with Bacon at the Gallery, named Valerie, who Bacon called "Valerie from the Gallery." Valerie from the Gallery had to play this strategic game with bacon where she'd stop by to try and get the paintings before bacon could overwork and eventually destroy them.

So this took a lot of discipline, in fact. He was more dedicated to making work he liked than he was to the money. Because at one point he was destroying hundreds of thousands, maybe a million pounds, every time he'd destroy a piece.

Only what happened in the studio could rely on chance and accident, but what left the studio was highly controlled.

Studio Practice

Bacon's studio itself is another point of his coherent but chaotic process. Bacon's studio is the stuff of legend. The first time Michael Peppiatt saw one of Bacon's paintings in his studio he said the painting looked "as if it had grown out of the studio."

Pictures of his studio look like a crime scenes or something. There's photographs everywhere, paint splattered on the walls, dirty brushes and rags everywhere, torn up books.

Like working hungover and leaving your work in the hands of chance and accident, the studio chaos certainly isn't for everybody. But it worked for Bacon.

Consistency

We see the expressive chaos in Bacons painting and hear the chance and accident stuff and can come away thinking that it's just a matter of throwing paint at a canvas and making modern art emerge.

But Bacon's work came out of a consistent dedication to his work. Always trying to improve. Always trying to evolve. Chaotic and insane as the specifics of his practice were, showing up every day to work is really the key.

Have Fun

Goodnight Sweeties