Francis Bacon

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together an extensive collection of Bacon's writing - the major prose in full, together with sixteen other pieces not otherwise available - to give the essence of his work and thinking. Although he had a distinguished career as a lawyer and statesman, Francis Bacon's lifelong goal was to improve and extend human knowledge. In The Advancement of Learning (1605) he made a brilliant critique of the deficiencies of previous systems of thought and proposed improvements to knowledge in every area of human life. He conceived the Essays (1597, much enlarged in 1625) as a study of the formative influences on human behaviour, psychological and social. In The New Atlantis (1626) he outlined his plan for a scientific research institute in the form of a Utopian fable. In addition to these major English works this edition includes 'Of Tribute', an important early work here printed complete for the first time, and a revealing selection of his legal and political writings, together with his poetry. A special feature of the edition is its extensive annotation which identifies Bacon's sources and allusions, and glosses his vocabulary. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together an extensive collection of Bacon's writing - the major prose in full, together with sixteen other pieces not otherwise available - to give the essence of his work and thinking. Although he had a distinguished career as a lawyer and statesman, Francis Bacon's lifelong goal was to improve and extend human knowledge. In The Advancement of Learning (1605) he made a brilliant critique of the deficiencies of previous systems of thought and proposed improvements to knowledge in every area of human life. He conceived the Essays (1597, much enlarged in 1625) as a study of the formative influences on human behaviour, psychological and social. In The New Atlantis (1626) he outlined his plan for a scientific research institute in the form of a Utopian fable. In addition to these major English works this edition includes 'Of Tribute', an important early work here printed complete for the first time, and a revealing selection of his legal and political writings, together with his poetry. A special feature of the edition is its extensive annotation which identifies Bacon's sources and allusions, and glosses his vocabulary. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

In this landmark text by one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Gilles Deleuze takes the paintings of Francis Bacon as his object of his study. The book presents a deep engagement with Bacon's work and the nature of art. Deleuze analyzes the distinctive innovations that came to mark Bacon's style: the isolation of the figure, the violation and deformations of the flesh, the complex use of color, the method of chance, and the use of the triptych form. Here Deleuze creates a number of his well-known concepts, such as the 'body without organs' and contrasts his own approach to painting with that of both the phenomenological and the art historical traditions. Deleuze links Bacon's work to Cezanne's notion of a 'logic' of sensation and, investigating this logic, explores Bacon's crucial relation to past painters such as Cezanne, Velasquez, and Soutine.

In this landmark text by one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Gilles Deleuze takes the paintings of Francis Bacon as his object of his study. The book presents a deep engagement with Bacon's work and the nature of art. Deleuze analyzes the distinctive innovations that came to mark Bacon's style: the isolation of the figure, the violation and deformations of the flesh, the complex use of color, the method of chance, and the use of the triptych form. Here Deleuze creates a number of his well-known concepts, such as the 'body without organs' and contrasts his own approach to painting with that of both the phenomenological and the art historical traditions. Deleuze links Bacon's work to Cezanne's notion of a 'logic' of sensation and, investigating this logic, explores Bacon's crucial relation to past painters such as Cezanne, Velasquez, and Soutine.

Published in 1996, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma was the first in-depth study of the artist's life. It has not been superseded. In this substantially revised, updated edition - to coincide with the artist's centenary, which will be celebrated from autumn 2008 through summer 2009 - Peppiatt will incorporate confidential material Bacon gave him, which he did not include in the first edition. This valuable, first-hand information comes from the hundreds of conversations Bacon had with Peppiatt, often late into the night, over thirty years, particularly during the periods Bacon spent living and working in Paris. It includes insights into Bacon's intimate relationships, his artistic convictions and his general view of life, as well as his acerbic comments on his contemporaries. Peppiatt will draw on some of the fascinating information that has become available in the fifteen years since the artist died. Once jealously guarded by the artist himself, the contents of Bacon's studio can now be freely consulted; Peppiatt has had privileged access to these archives, and he will show how a number of recent discoveries - including wholly unexpected source material - have radically changed the way we look at Bacon's work. Similarly, his recent research into the artist's background - his tortured affair with the sadistic Peter Lacy in Tangier, for instance, and the baffling circumstances of his death in Madrid - will shed light on unexplored areas of Bacon's life and work. Peppiatt will also unveil new information from several people who knew Bacon intimately and who have never gone on record previously.

Published in 1996, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma was the first in-depth study of the artist's life. It has not been superseded. In this substantially revised, updated edition - to coincide with the artist's centenary, which will be celebrated from autumn 2008 through summer 2009 - Peppiatt will incorporate confidential material Bacon gave him, which he did not include in the first edition. This valuable, first-hand information comes from the hundreds of conversations Bacon had with Peppiatt, often late into the night, over thirty years, particularly during the periods Bacon spent living and working in Paris. It includes insights into Bacon's intimate relationships, his artistic convictions and his general view of life, as well as his acerbic comments on his contemporaries. Peppiatt will draw on some of the fascinating information that has become available in the fifteen years since the artist died. Once jealously guarded by the artist himself, the contents of Bacon's studio can now be freely consulted; Peppiatt has had privileged access to these archives, and he will show how a number of recent discoveries - including wholly unexpected source material - have radically changed the way we look at Bacon's work. Similarly, his recent research into the artist's background - his tortured affair with the sadistic Peter Lacy in Tangier, for instance, and the baffling circumstances of his death in Madrid - will shed light on unexplored areas of Bacon's life and work. Peppiatt will also unveil new information from several people who knew Bacon intimately and who have never gone on record previously.

The Times Art Book of the Year 2021 FINALIST FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD 2022 ‘Must surely be the definitive life of Francis Bacon … A biography that no Bacon fan – or indeed foe – can afford to overlook … Mesmerising’ THE TIMES ‘A magnificent triumph … I was captivated by every line’ OBSERVER A decade in the making, based upon hundreds of interviews and extensive new material, Pulitzer Prize winners Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have written a startlingly original portrait – rich, complex, and subtle – of a commanding modern figure. Bacon concealed many important aspects of his life. He described himself as an asthmatic child in Ireland with foxhunting parents and a tyrannical father, but he was also rescued by a series of formidable women – women who in this biography emerge in their own right. He was never just a dissolute young man but was also a passionate reader, largely self-taught. Early on, influenced by Eileen Gray, he became a hard-working and ambitious designer, a brief career explored here in detail for the first time. He dreamed of remaking the modern room. Bacon worked no less hard or ambitiously as a painter, at first with little success. Throughout the 1930s and early ’40s he suffered ongoing failures, growing isolated and often ill. His health issues throughout his life were far more significant than he revealed. Then came his astonishing breakthrough in 1944, with Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion . In the following decades, he emerged as one of the great iconoclasts and bon vivants of his time, a Wildean figure whom one friend called ‘a terrific grandee.’ Bacon was typically celebrated as a sexual adventurer who liked rough trade, but he never stopped longing for a serious committed relationship, however painful. He continued to make disturbing images of the strangeness within, but developed into a more varied artist than has been recognised, creating in particular an extraordinary series of self-portraits. He was an artist who believed in chance and paradox: the iconoclast eventually became an icon. This is a story, deeply researched and masterfully told, of a sickly boy who became one of the great figures of his time. The twentieth century does not know itself without Bacon.

The Times Art Book of the Year 2021 FINALIST FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD 2022 ‘Must surely be the definitive life of Francis Bacon … A biography that no Bacon fan – or indeed foe – can afford to overlook … Mesmerising’ THE TIMES ‘A magnificent triumph … I was captivated by every line’ OBSERVER A decade in the making, based upon hundreds of interviews and extensive new material, Pulitzer Prize winners Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have written a startlingly original portrait – rich, complex, and subtle – of a commanding modern figure. Bacon concealed many important aspects of his life. He described himself as an asthmatic child in Ireland with foxhunting parents and a tyrannical father, but he was also rescued by a series of formidable women – women who in this biography emerge in their own right. He was never just a dissolute young man but was also a passionate reader, largely self-taught. Early on, influenced by Eileen Gray, he became a hard-working and ambitious designer, a brief career explored here in detail for the first time. He dreamed of remaking the modern room. Bacon worked no less hard or ambitiously as a painter, at first with little success. Throughout the 1930s and early ’40s he suffered ongoing failures, growing isolated and often ill. His health issues throughout his life were far more significant than he revealed. Then came his astonishing breakthrough in 1944, with Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion . In the following decades, he emerged as one of the great iconoclasts and bon vivants of his time, a Wildean figure whom one friend called ‘a terrific grandee.’ Bacon was typically celebrated as a sexual adventurer who liked rough trade, but he never stopped longing for a serious committed relationship, however painful. He continued to make disturbing images of the strangeness within, but developed into a more varied artist than has been recognised, creating in particular an extraordinary series of self-portraits. He was an artist who believed in chance and paradox: the iconoclast eventually became an icon. This is a story, deeply researched and masterfully told, of a sickly boy who became one of the great figures of his time. The twentieth century does not know itself without Bacon.

Using the painter's queer identity as a framework to understand his visceral approach to figuration Francis Bacon is considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century, best known for his distinctive way of portraying human figures. Especially in his male portraits and nudes, the physicality of the body--skin, flesh, muscles--is translated by the artist into thick, oily textures, giving the figures almost abstract shapes. Flashes of teeth, torsos and rib cages underscore Bacon's visceral philosophy regarding the human form. As the artist famously said: "We are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go into a butcher's shop I always think it is surprising that I wasn't there instead of the animal." Beyond their carnal overtones, these paintings unite a wide variety of influences, revisiting canonical themes and combining references to the great masters of painting with Bacon's own perceptions of the male body. Both his biography and oeuvre were permeated by the presence of his lovers, with whom he established intense and turbulent relationships. Francis Bacon: The Beauty of Meat accompanies the 2024 exhibition at the Museu de Arte de S?o Paulo, exploring the queer aspects of the artist's work and highlighting how Bacon, with his innovative and impactful painting, paved the way for queer presence in visual culture. Born in Ireland, British painter Francis Bacon (1909-92) worked in furniture design and interior decoration until 1945, when his career as a painter took off. He enjoyed colossal success in his lifetime, especially as part of a London cohort that included such contemporaries as Lucian Freud and John Deakin.

An accessible presentation of Bacon's entire oeuvre of paintings, punctuated by quotes from eminent artists such as Lucian Freud and Damien Hirst Quarter-bound with cloth, this volume compiles the complete paintings of Francis Bacon, the dissident darling of the 20th-century art world. Over a career spanning more than five decades, Bacon produced almost 500 paintings, including his signature diptychs and triptychs. Francis Bacon: Paintings charts his entire lifetime of radical artistry, from his early Surrealist experiments of the 1920s to the stark, elegiac works completed just before his death. It features over 700 high-quality reproductions that capture the vigor and detail of Bacon's paintings. In lieu of lengthy essays, brief expository texts accompany select works, indexing the emergence of key formal and thematic developments in his practice. Also interspersed throughout are quotes from Bacon as well as from eminent friends, critics and admirers, such as Lucian Freud, Roald Dahl and Damien Hirst. Read together, the quotes animate a critical dialogue on the artist's work and legacy. While Gilles Deleuze purported that Bacon was interested in "...a static or potential violence, a violence of reaction and expression," the artist himself asserted, "I never look for violence...but life is violent; so much more violent than anything I can do!" Emerging from a turbulent inner life and the devastation of World War II, the Irish British painter Francis Bacon (1909-92) created art that is both unsettling and hypnotic, repulsive and irresistible, earning him a reputation as a "master of the grotesque." Eschewing the abstraction preferred in the mid-century, Bacon instead developed a quasi-realist style that rendered the human figure as warped and anguished. Laura Scalabrella Spada completed her PhD at University College London in the Department of History of Art in 2020. Her research focuses on early modern European art, with a particular emphasis on the body and its processes, boundaries and relations. She has published papers on the politics of corporeality and animation in early modern prints and currently works as an independent researcher.

Using the painter's queer identity as a framework to understand his visceral approach to figuration Francis Bacon is considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century, best known for his distinctive way of portraying human figures. Especially in his male portraits and nudes, the physicality of the body--skin, flesh, muscles--is translated by the artist into thick, oily textures, giving the figures almost abstract shapes. Flashes of teeth, torsos and rib cages underscore Bacon's visceral philosophy regarding the human form. As the artist famously said: "We are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go into a butcher's shop I always think it is surprising that I wasn't there instead of the animal." Beyond their carnal overtones, these paintings unite a wide variety of influences, revisiting canonical themes and combining references to the great masters of painting with Bacon's own perceptions of the male body. Both his biography and oeuvre were permeated by the presence of his lovers, with whom he established intense and turbulent relationships. Francis Bacon: The Beauty of Meat accompanies the 2024 exhibition at the Museu de Arte de S?o Paulo, exploring the queer aspects of the artist's work and highlighting how Bacon, with his innovative and impactful painting, paved the way for queer presence in visual culture. Born in Ireland, British painter Francis Bacon (1909-92) worked in furniture design and interior decoration until 1945, when his career as a painter took off. He enjoyed colossal success in his lifetime, especially as part of a London cohort that included such contemporaries as Lucian Freud and John Deakin.