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Francis Bacon: Revelations
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About This Book
Francis Bacon created an indelible image of mankind in modern times, and played an outsized role in both twentieth century art and life--from his public emergence with his legendary Triptych 1944 (its images so unrelievedly awful that people fled the gallery), to his death in Madrid in 1992.Bacon was a witty free spirit and unabashed homosexual at a time when many others remained closeted, and his exploits were as unforgettable as his images. He moved among the worlds of London's Soho and East End, the literary salons of London and Paris, and the homosexual life of Tangier. Through hundreds of interviews, and extensive new research, the authors probe Bacon's childhood in Ireland (he earned his father's lasting disdain because his asthma prevented him from hunting); his increasingly open homosexuality; his early design career--never before explored in detail; the formation of his vision; his early failure as an artist; his uneasy relationship with American abstract art; and his improbable late emergence onto the international stage as one of the great visionaries of the twentieth century. In all, Francis Bacon: Revelations gives us a more complete and nuanced--and more international--portrait than ever before of this singularly private, darkly funny, eruptive man and his equally eruptive, extraordinary art. Bacon was not just an influential artist, he helped remake the twentieth-century figure.
Reviews
"It is enormously detailed; we get the details, and the details' details ..."
"The American art critics Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have compiled a weighty, thorough and compelling biography of the artist that records nine decades of intense moments."
"Much of the book's power is in inducing us to see again, from a new angle, what has previously appeared familiar ..."
"Had he been trained, he would have been a better draftsman, with the technical skill to integrate his figures and their backgrounds."
"Stevens and Swan are strong on the Aeschylean patterning of Bacon's life ..."
"What else do Bacon's relationships, however outré, reveal but wild longing?"
"He was an S&M enthusiast who lived with his childhood nanny."
"For Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, two Pulitzer Prize-winning American arts journalists, Bacon has been a decade-long obsession."
"an engrossing portrait of the artist, his art, and his incorrigible personality ..."
"An appropriately hefty biography of the mercurial artist ..."
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