[HN Gopher] Francis Bacon's Frightening Beauty
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Francis Bacon's Frightening Beauty
Author : apollinaire
Score : 60 points
Date : 2021-05-23 04:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| lordgrenville wrote:
| Bacon (the artist) shouldn't have been allowed to overload that
| name. He should have been forced to use, say, Francis L. Bacon
| (yes, I realise he didn't have a middle name).
| onorton wrote:
| But why? It was his actual birth name. He also wasn't knighted
| so you could use the title "Sir" to distinguish the other
| Francis Bacon from him, though I've noticed Americans don't use
| the title generally when referring to those knighted in the UK
| (and presumably other countries as well).
| mef wrote:
| Shouldn't have been allowed by whom?
| cpach wrote:
| It is indeed very confusing :)
| [deleted]
| keiferski wrote:
| For anyone that hasn't discovered a new mathematical formula or
| founded a billion dollar startup by age 22, take heart. Bacon
| didn't really start painting until his late twenties and his
| first breakthrough came in his mid thirties. Now he's probably in
| the top 20 of well-known 20th century artists.
|
| Another interesting aspect of Bacon was his work schedule. It's a
| miracle he lived as long as he did (to age 82.)
|
| From _Daily Rituals_ :
|
| _To the outside observer, Bacon appeared to thrive on disorder.
| His studios were environments of extreme chaos, with paint
| smeared on the walls and a knee-high jumble of books, brushes,
| papers, broken furniture, and other detritus piled on the floor.
| (More agreeable interiors stifled his creativity, he said.) And
| when he wasn't painting, Bacon lived a life of hedonistic excess,
| eating multiple rich meals a day, drinking tremendous quantities
| of alcohol, taking whatever stimulants were handy, and generally
| staying out later and partying harder than any of his
| contemporaries._
|
| Edit: just adding to this, because I'm sure someone will mention
| it. Bacon did indeed paint in his early twenties and even had an
| exhibition or two, but reviews were bad and he gave up art for a
| ~decade. So, I count that as "not really painting."
| skrebbel wrote:
| > late twenties
|
| Wait, is this considered _old_ now? I recognize that you 're
| fighting the good fight against ageism and giving up. But by
| painting Bacon as an exceptional case, you're also helping
| reinforce the myth that of you're not wildly successful by 35,
| you've missed the boat.
|
| I have a hard time believing that Bacon's case is such an
| outlier. I never collected the data but i know of plenty
| artists and entrepreneurs who started in their thirties,
| forties and older.
| keiferski wrote:
| I was mostly joking, but I do feel like it's common for 27-35
| year olds to feel like they've "missed their chance."
| prepend wrote:
| Just wait until you encounter the 37-45 year olds.
| suifbwish wrote:
| How old was Einstein when he published his theory on special
| relativity? The idea that age is a limiter on significant
| achievement is moronic.
| jfengel wrote:
| Uh... 26.
|
| And he was 36 when he published general relativity.
|
| Which was his last really big achievement. Of course he
| still continued to produce a ton of work, many individual
| pieces of which would be considered a capstone achievement
| for many ordinary physicists.
|
| But a lot of his effort was spent on a unified field theory
| that never really came together. And a lot was spent on
| trying to prove that quantum mechanics was incomplete --
| which turned out to have some useful discoveries that
| largely affirm that QM _is_ complete (at least within its
| domain).
|
| In other words, he kinda was a model of somebody who did
| his best work before his mid-30s, and spent the rest of his
| career merely being very, very smart.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| For anyone who hasn't started a billion dollar startup by 22,
| you're probably not going to
|
| The tech industry has this weird habit of "inspiring" people to
| get into tech because they could build the next facebook or
| google.
|
| In reality, engineering/software can land you in a very
| comfortable lifestyle if you're good at it and I think more
| people should be focusing their efforts on becoming better
| engineers for that middle class lifestyle, rather than trying
| and failing to create the next big thing all the time.
| nicoburns wrote:
| More generally:
|
| > For anyone who hasn't started a billion dollar startup,
| you're probably not going to
| katzgrau wrote:
| > I think more people should be focusing their efforts on
| becoming better engineers for that middle class lifestyle
|
| That's a perfectly acceptable plan if it fits into your
| personal vision for yourself.
|
| Some people want to create things and make a business out of
| it. They want the full gamut of experience, including the
| hard times that can come with it.
|
| I'm one of those people. I left a very well paid gig to
| bootstrap my company and grind it out. I've learned _so_ much
| and I employ 10 people. I value that and it gives me a lot of
| satisfaction. It 's just how I have fun and get enjoyment out
| of life.
|
| I would advise against chasing "a billion dollars" though.
| Chasing that kind of money is more likely than not an ego
| play (catering to your ego rarely leads anywhere of value),
| and yes, the odds are against you.
|
| You can, with reasonable odds, build a good business. I
| recently read somewhere that most successful businesses are
| started by people in their 40s, which makes sense.
| paganel wrote:
| There's nothing objectively "beautiful" in Bacon's paintings,
| it's just some mangled faces who look objectively ugly (one could
| make a reference to Baudelaire and say that "ugly is beautiful",
| not sure if the article does that because it is behind a paywall
| for me) and, more importantly, those faces happened to be painted
| by a English-speaking white man in the mid- to late-20th century,
| when the powers that be needed paintings by English-speaking
| white men in order to better colonize the cultural landscape.
| noofen wrote:
| > when the powers that be needed paintings by English-speaking
| white men in order to better colonize the cultural landscape.
|
| And here we are. The powers that be need foot soldiers like you
| in order to better colonize the cultural landscape with white
| ethno-masochism.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar; use this
| site for predictable ideological battle; or cross into
| personal attack.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Decker87 wrote:
| Who are you to define what is "objectively" beautiful?
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them
| instead._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| Always nice to see some art pop up on HN and Im sure the
| article is a beautifully constructed piece of prose. I also
| just personally have had some moments where Ive really been
| inspired by Bacon's work and Ive seen his work empower a lot of
| young art students. Maybe more than any other individual artist
| (not totally sure why).
|
| BUT Im extremely happy to see someone calling out an article
| made by a magazine so obviously (historically) for a primarily
| white male audience by a primarily white male staff featuring a
| white male artist who has been written about and gushed over ad
| nauseam from a cultural / historical moment of unrivaled white
| male domination. As if Bacon, Van Gogh were the only two humans
| to ever make art. Stop turning dead people into part of your
| decrepit 20th century subjugation spectacle machine.
|
| All humans are artists, including software engineers and HN
| trolls.
|
| That said I didn't read the article and Im a white male artist.
| glangdale wrote:
| Having a bit of a giggle at the idea of the "powers that be"
| using Francis Bacon, of all people, to "better colonize the
| cultural landscape".
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into predictable, tedious
| flamewars; post shallow dismissals of other people's work; or
| post unsubstantive comments generally.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| paganel wrote:
| If we cannot freely criticise art then we shouldn't post art-
| related stuff on this forum.
| dang wrote:
| It's not about "cannot criticize", it's about comment
| quality. Low-information, high-indignation comments are not
| what we want here.
|
| Thoughtful critique is welcome, but that is not what you
| posted--you posted a shallow, reflexive dismissal ("just
| some mangled faces") followed by an egregious flamewar
| tangent. You get a point for Baudelaire but that was not
| nearly enough to redeem what you posted there.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Francis Bacon certainly ranks high on my list of artists who
| could be serial killers. I saw his exhibit at the Pompidou and
| man, it's fascinating but utterly brutal.
|
| Apropos of nothing, I've wondered if there's a sly Bacon joke in
| Killing Eve. In the second season, Villanelle sees a painting of
| a man hung upside down, insides slit open. She comments that
| "they look like bacon". While from the character's perspective
| it's likely that she's just comparing the people to food, it does
| work well as an art joke cause the painting truly does have the
| same macabre feel of a Francis Bacon
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I'm not sure what makes you think he could have been a serial
| killer, but if it's the subject matter of his art I wonder what
| you think of horror authors and filmmakers, or authors of true-
| crime novels and filmmakers, or the hundreds of millions of
| people who are their fans.
|
| Just because one finds such dark visions of humanity
| fascinating doesn't mean you want to hurt anyone. I've never
| seen a shred of evidence that such people are any more prone to
| violence (much less serial killing) than anyone else.
|
| If anything, there's an argument to be made for the cathartic
| value of such art, and its those who don't have such an outlet
| who I'd be more worried about.
| BruceEel wrote:
| ..and in case you haven't watched yet, check out the excellent
| Melvyn Bragg docu/interview (available on YT here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99Le9zFw-uc )
| tnolet wrote:
| One of the best Francis Bacon art books (and best art books in
| general) is https://www.amazon.com/Camera-Francis-Photography-
| Practice-P...
|
| It juxtaposes the source material Bacon used for his paintings
| (pictures, film, other painting mostly by Velazquez etc.) with
| the eventual paintings.
|
| This is briefly mentioned in the New Yorker article but a
| fascinating aspect of his work: he was remixing / paraphrasing
| all the time!
| throwaway29303 wrote:
| I had this morbid curiosity about Bacon's work and life a long
| while ago and I happened to find a YouTube documentary[0] about
| him. Pretty interesting and sad at the same time. It's worth a
| watch, IMO.
|
| [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgrO5za0lSY
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/2VLlO
| neilpanchal wrote:
| I remember a quote from one of his documentaries - "How can you
| cut the flesh open and join with the other person? It's an
| impossibility. You may love somebody very much but how near can
| you get to them? You're always, unfortunately, sort of
| strangers." It's profound and captures the essence of his view of
| the world. It was so deeply animalistic and visceral. Bacon is
| one of my favorite artists - from motif, substance, contrast,
| beauty, gore, etc to the realization into thick impasto style,
| composition, giant canvas, color harmony and his technique of
| "painting by chance" as he describes it - exceptional and
| extraordinary on many levels.
| harveywi wrote:
| Bacon is great food for thought.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I really thought this was going to be about Francis Bacon. But
| it's about Francis Bacon (artist).
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(page generated 2021-05-24 23:03 UTC)