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The Art of Francis Bacon
| Article
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17003 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1990 |
1,784 Words |
| Author
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Jason Edward Kaufman
Jason Edward Kaufman is an art historian and critic based in
New York. |
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, photography and abstraction have precipitated the near demise of the great Western tradition of figure painting. If the genre has persisted in the careers of Dubuffet, Modigliani, de Kooning, and Fischl, it has done so in a manner weakened first by the aversion to realism induced by photography, and second, by the unquestioned acceptance of virtually any and all forms of abstraction. Dubuffet's figurative glyphs lack complexity, Modigliani's portraits are beautiful but seem superficial, de Kooning's Women are types not individuals, and Fischl's personages are anonymous actors in staged narratives. In comparison with the wondrous likenesses executed by Holbein, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Goya, and Ingres, it becomes clear that in each case these Modernists have generalized their subjects. Their depictions, though not insignificant in their own rights, lack the specificity and factuality endemic to the great figurative tradition.
Has that tradition in fact perished? I think not. In the early part of the century, Picasso evolved a radical style which, though nonphotographic, did not preclude highly specific forms of characterization. In the forties and fifties, it was Alberto Giacometti who re-invented figuration. And in the postwar period, Francis Bacon devised an original mode of figurative representation. An Irish-born Englishman, Bacon (b. 1909) is perhaps the greatest living figure painter of the Western world. His pictures are not only of real individuals but also tell us something about what it means to have been alive in the late twentieth century. His language is quintessentially of this age.
A retrospective of fifty-eight of Bacon's paintings, organized by James T. Demetrion, director of
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