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Cosmo Adair

Royal Academy 29th January – 17th April 2022

London, 24th February. Storm Eunice, ‘the worst in 30 years’ or whatnot, rages like an old, deluded man — a quick, thirty minute burst of anger, followed by an hour-or-so of embarrassed retreat. Outside the Royal Academy, a motorbike had blown over and was ringing its nauseating siren. All the better, then, that my brother whom I was meeting there was late; and so I stood outside (AT THE BACK ‘CAUSE THE COURTYARD WAS SHUT) and contemplated how bleak and cynical my view of mankind would be after spending an hour looking at Francis Bacon paintings and hearing about his peculiar sexual fantasies and how man and beast are the same sort-of and how we’re all in anguish, pain and are furiously lashing out against the monsters inside. My brother arrived, finally, and we walked down that bizarre corridor/storeroom, packed with unloved sculptures and unlovable paintings, which leads to the main galleries.

The exhibition, curated by Michael Peppiatt (Bacon’s friend and biographer), explores the relationship between man and beast in Bacon’s paintings. This is a crucial lens for understanding Bacon’s paintings, Peppiatt argues, but one that is often overlooked. Of course Bacon should have been influenced by animals. He grew up on an Irish stud farm. His relationship with his parents was difficult at best: one story suggests that his father once made the grooms whip the young Francis with horsewhips. He was also shy. Animals, as for many lonely children, could be his consolation; he could love his horses, his little puppy, or the big smelly cow … Or, in the words of Peppiatt, he could observe ‘the way that they fought, copulated, and died’. That’s what he did. It might be weird, but it gave us Francis Bacon. And without Francis Bacon, what would we be, have, think? Perhaps we’d even, what?, think human beings had a shred of decency to them.

The first painting Head 1 (1948) has a misleadingly dull title. It’s alone in the exhibition’s first room. Because of my brother’s tardiness, as well, we had that room to ourselves. I was struck by the painting’s texture: the grittiness of oil on board, but also the sculptural qualities of the teeth. Somehow the teeth rise off the canvas, in 3D. ‘Those are some pretty cool teeth,’ I said. My brother nodded in approval. It’s always fun visiting an Art Exhibition with a critic (especially one so, um, sophisticated, and well … Ladies?). Head 1 is fascinating, too, in its typically Baconian elements: not only the distorted, screaming mouth, but also the depiction of the surrounding space. A few lines are present, suggesting the walls and the back of an old-fashioned sofa. It suggests that the figure is in such anguish, is so completely isolated from the outside world, that the only thing which it can see or hear or feel is its own tormented interiority. When thinking of Bacon’s art as an art which depicts mental illness, this certainly seems to be the most relevant in the exhibition.

Next, the gallery offered us a few paintings resemblant of Bacon’s famous Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion (on permanent display in the Tate Britain). One of these, Fury (1944), interested me. The figure has the same distorted, humanoid figure as seen in the right picture of Three Studies. But, crucially, it appears to be eating roses. Why? Well, as I ventured to suggest to my brother, ‘It seems a pretty obvious motif to me, which Bacon’s using … Of course, it’s violence destroying love, or anger or anguish doing so.’ My brother bettered me and compared it to Toulouse-Lautrec; I felt belittled and insufficiently pretentious. We were Cain and Abel; we were Richard II and Bolingbroke — and once we’d taken this to its bitter, egotistical end, I knew I would come out the better man. I set my sights on the next room.

There were lots of animal paintings. This, I knew, was showtime. And I had my suspicions confirmed when I saw a painting of a man next to a monkey. And then I saw another monkey. And then another. And then I realised how unbelievably overdone the whole Post-Darwinian idea of man-as-ape was. But then, unsuspectingly, I found myself muttering, ‘Well, really, it’s about how similar we all are to apes. And we all have that ape inside of us, still.’

Chimpanzee (1955) was excellent. In my opinion — and, frustratingly, in my brother’s too — it was the exhibition’s standout piece. There’s an incredible sense of the chimpanzee’s frenetic pain, its wild anguish. The influence of Eadward Muybridge’s photography is evident in the way that Bacon captures the chimpanzee’s successive movements. What’s perhaps most amazing about the picture is how complete an impression of the animal we receive despite Bacon’s sparing use of the paintbrush. ‘Wow’, I said. Chimpanzee had instigated a brief ceasefire in our intellectual sparring; but not, you’ll be pleased to hear, enough to stop me from moving very close to the canvas and leaning my head over to look at some detail I’d apparently spotted. All the other visitors could tell I was thinking something profound. Perfect.

Nearby was the eloquently titled Dog (1955). It made an interesting comparison to Bacon’s other paintings, since the pictorial space was much more open. Yet even then, with the horizon visible, the dog seemed so isolated in such a claustrophobic space. That might have been the ominous red hexagon around it. Much of the canvas is left untouched — and, in fact, the whole thing is untreated, lending it a raw, urgent feeling. The cars go by, in the background. ‘The cars,’ I said, ‘remind me of the Torturer’s Horse in the Auden poem.’ That stumped my brother. ‘Who’s Auden?’ Oh, please … Get Out! But that was, in an overly allusive manner, an excellent reflection on the cars. They seem to reflect the cosmic indifference to suffering; the fact that, at the end of the day, your suffering doesn’t amount to much, and the world goes on in its merry way. Profound, maybe. Bleak, definitely. Then came the Crucifixion (1950): the climax of the exhibition’s brutality. An owl-like creature is on a cross, and some canine creature stalks it from above. The surface is roughened by fluff, mixed into the paint. Bacon’s use of texture (the untreated canvases, congealed paint, mixed-in materials) is truly magnificent. ‘He must have been, like, the first person ever to use materials like that,’ my brother remarked. ‘Uh, the Cubists … the Dadaists,’ I remarked. A smile on my face. Victory lap inbound.

By this point, less than halfway through the exhibition (but, dear reader, I assure you, over halfway through this review), it dawned on me that it’s possible to saturate an audience. Too much Bacon, especially on a dark, stormy day, can leave you a little exhausted. The next few rooms, therefore, didn’t quite grab a hold of my attention in the same way as the previous ones had. For that reason, sadly, my review is slightly flawed: so I won’t be able to speak of the Popes, and the later developments of the 60s and 70s.

We’ll sail through four or five rooms, and we’ll pick up with the exhibition’s headline pieces: Study for Bullfight No.1, No.2, and No. 3. It’s the first time these have been displayed together. This was truly exciting, and a smile on my nauseated face confirmed this. I’ll only talk about No. 1. In the centre there’s a bullfight and in the top right a kind of curtain opens in the background which shows a group of soldiers whom I can only assume are Nazis, dressed in grey uniforms with a big flag. And so the bullfight — how its audience relishes in violence — develops into a metaphor for the Nazis. Perhaps.

Now, the bit we’ve all been waiting for … Bacon’s use of white paint in these studies, and how it’s randomly tossed onto the canvas, and then painted over again. The artist becomes the matador, governed by the illegible narrative of fate. Critics are often too eager to make connections between a detail in a painting and the reproductive system. But I think we can agree the white paint’s a little like ejaculate. So masculine and exciting that it almost makes you agree with Bacon’s statement, ‘Bullfighting is like boxing, a marvellous aperitif to sex.’

Well, sobeit Francis. I’m yet to try it. But I can certainly assure you that a Francis Bacon exhibition isn’t one. I walked out a little tired, dejected, thinking how mankind is so brittle and terrible and terrified and violent.