The most expensive and scariest paintings: Why the world so appreciates the work of Francis Bacon

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In 2013, the painting "Three Sketches for a Portrait of Lucian Freud" by Francis Bacon broke the record, becoming the most expensive ever sold at auction. Its price was $ 142.4 million. Other works of the artist in demand among connoisseurs and collectors are slightly inferior to this picture, millions and tens of millions are paid for the right to purchase Bacon's works. The chorus of skeptics, habitual for modern art, who doubt the adequacy of such "prices", when talking about Bacon somehow weakens: everyone, probably, a person understands what is shown in these paintings and why it is so important and valuable.

Scream in Bacon's paintings - when "the body comes out through the mouth"

Because art for Francis Bacon became a way to reconcile the artist with the world - the external world and the internal world, and he taught the same to those who looked at his works, perplexed, recoiling and looking again. Bacon did not like to paint from life, preferring even to work on portraits all alone - the "model" in this case were numerous photographs, often crumpled and scattered on the floor of the workshop, so Bacon felt like in a laboratory. So it was, just the laboratory turned out to be unusual, there from the bitter experience of the past, misunderstanding, enmity with loved ones, their deaths, as a result of an intense and painful dialogue between the artist and the canvas, something more was born than an image - a reflection of the human soul. Bacon's souls, first of all, but the master should not be ascribed to the focus exclusively on himself: he wrote about each.

His paintings are frightening, not by depicting horrors in the usual material form, but rather by depicting the essence, the essence of the terrible, that which comes to a person during nightmares, but at the same time has some kind of inner harmony.

Francis Bacon was little understood in life. It all started in childhood, when the boy discovered in himself atypical inclinations. His father, a descendant of the same Francis Bacon, who was the famous philosopher of the Late Renaissance, did not like much in his son. Poor health, asthmatic, with strange habits - for example, secretly dressing up in mother's clothes - all this turned Captain Edward Mortimer Bacon away from his son. When the young man was seventeen, his father kicked him out of the house.

Self-taught artist

Francis left for London, from there - he went on a long trip to Berlin, so his father decided. He assigned a family friend to the young man to influence the young Bacon. But it so happened that between the travelers an intimate relationship began, and henceforth, only men will be the subject of Francis's love experiences, and women, such as Jesse's nanny from childhood, will be assigned the role of close friends. In Berlin, Francis Bacon plunged into nightlife, met with local bohemian, saw films by Sergei Eisenstein and Fritz Lang, which made an exceptional impression on him. An equally important milestone in the development of Bacon as an artist was the visit to an exhibition of Pablo Picasso, which took place a little later in Paris. Then Francis realized that he would be painting.

Bacon had neither practical experience nor education - except for a couple of school classes - he also had to earn his own food, and therefore the newly converted artist got a job as a furniture restorer, and also found a sponsor-patron Eric Hall and got mentors in painting. He painted in the style of cubism and imitated the surrealists, something was bought by collectors, something was unclaimed; the surrealists did not recognize Bacon as their own.

The first work that brought him real success was the painting-triptych "Three studies for figures at the foot of the crucifix", she opened a series of Bacon's triptychs. The artist subsequently turned to the theme of the crucifixion more than once, despite the fact that he was an atheist.

Bacon's worldwide recognition and self-criticism

The way Bacon's style was formed was influenced by the books he read - about diseases, for example, acquaintances and novels - and there were plenty of love relationships in his life, and also the death of relatives and friends. In the paintings, the artist “lived” suffering and loss. He drank a lot - which eventually lost one kidney, traveled a lot - visited, in addition to various European countries, Africa, the United States and South America.

Bacon called his works "sketches" or "sketches" and generally treated the results of his work very demanding, no wonder that most of Bacon's works have not reached the present day - the artist simply destroyed the paintings in which he found flaws. He constantly studied, and he took the classics as a basis and guideline, starting with Michelangelo, trying to adopt the technique of overlaying strokes, methods of working with light and shadow. One of the 17th century masters, Diego Velazquez, provided Bacon with inspiration for years to come, inspiring him to create a series of papal portraits, of which he created about forty in total. Popes, their heads and the whole range of emotions on their faces literally "pursued" the artist.

After the tragic death of his boyfriend George Dyer, who committed suicide, Bacon felt especially depressed. He dedicated three "Black Triptychs" to the memory of his deceased friend, and then began to increasingly turn to self-portrait. In 1992, 82-year-old Bacon went, against the advice of doctors, on a trip to Spain and died there. He left his multimillion-dollar fortune to John Edwards, a bartender friend from London's Soho.

“Three Sketches for a Portrait of Lucian Freud” is a painting dedicated to another friend of the artist and fellow by profession. The painting cost record lasted almost two years, until 2015, when the palm was taken over by the work of Pablo Picasso, who was called An artist who did not know how to love, but loved to artistically torture.