https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/24/francis-bacons-frightening-beauty

Skip to main content
The New Yorker

  * Newsletter

To revisit this article, select My Account, then 

Close Alert
Sign In
Search

  * News
  * Books & Culture
  * Fiction & Poetry
  * Humor & Cartoons
  * Magazine
  * Crossword
  * Video
  * Podcasts
  * Archive
  * Goings On
  * Shop

Open Navigation Menu

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories

Close Alert
The New Yorker
Books
May 24, 2021 Issue

Francis Bacon's Frightening Beauty

Obsessed with the body and its torments, the artist said that he
wanted to strike the viewer's "nervous system."

By Joan Acocella

May 17, 2021

  *  
  *  
  *  
  *  
  *  
    Save this story for later.

Francis Bacon
Bacon in his studio in 1962. He wanted his pictures to leave "a trail
of the human presence and memory trace of past events as the snail
leaves its slime."Photograph by Irving Penn / (c) Conde Nast

  *  
  *  
  *  
  *  
  *  
    Save this story for later.

"I have always been very moved by pictures about slaughterhouses and
meat," the painter Francis Bacon said to an interviewer in 1962. He
regarded meat with fellow-feeling. "If I go into a butcher's shop, I
always think it's surprising that I wasn't there instead of the
animal," he later said. We have a photograph of him gazing serenely
out at us from between two sides of beef. Cloven carcasses--indeed,
piles of miscellaneous innards--recur in his paintings. Basically, he
liked whatever was inside, as opposed to outside, the skin.

His favorite body part was the mouth. Once, in a bookshop in Paris,
he found an old medical treatise on diseases of the oral cavity. The
book had beautiful hand-colored plates, showing what Bacon called the
"glitter and color" of the inside of the mouth, the glistening
membranes. He bought the book and cherished it all his life. He said
that he always hoped he could paint the mouth as Monet had painted
sunsets.

Published in the print edition of the May 24, 2021, issue, with the
headline "Art Made Flesh."
Joan Acocella has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995.
Her most recent book is "Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints."
More:ArtistsArtPaintersBritishFrancis BaconBiographiesBooks

Books & Fiction

Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the
world of literature in your in-box. Sign up for the Books & Fiction
newsletter.
Enter your e-mail address
[                    ]
Sign up

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy &
Cookie Statement.

The New Yorker

Sections

  * News
  * Books & Culture
  * Fiction & Poetry
  * Humor & Cartoons
  * Magazine
  * Crossword
  * Video
  * Podcasts
  * Archive
  * Goings On

More

  * Customer Care
  * Shop The New Yorker
  * Buy Covers and Cartoons
  * Conde Nast Store
  * Digital Access
  * Newsletters
  * Jigsaw Puzzle
  * RSS
  * Site Map

  * About
  * Careers
  * Contact
  * F.A.Q.
  * Media Kit
  * Press
  * Accessibility Help
  * Conde Nast Spotlight

(c) 2021 Conde Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes
acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie
Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn
a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site
as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on
this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or
otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Conde
Nast. Ad Choices

  *  
  *  
  *  
  *  
  *  

Do Not Sell My Personal Info