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Lot Essay
"I loathe my own face but I go on painting it only because I haven't got any other people to do. [...] One of the nicest things that Cocteau said was: 'Each day in the mirror I watch death at work.' This is what one does oneself." (Francis Bacon cited in David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, Interviews with Francis Bacon, London 1990, p. 130-133).
For Francis Bacon, whose uniquely disturbing and timeless art seems in many ways to have stronger connections to the traditions of the Old Masters than to many of the movements and 'isms' of the twentieth century, self-portraiture was intrinsically connected to the artist's very strong awareness of the passing of time and the presence of death within everything in life.
Formerly in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Three Studies for a Self-Portrait belongs to an outstanding series of self-portrait heads that Bacon produced in the 1970s and is one of only six small-scale triptychs devoted wholly to this subject. It portrays the distorted but recogniseable features of Bacon's owl-like face in three varying degrees of twisted mutilation. The sequential effect of these three contrasting depictions of artist's face endows the complete work with a sense of motion, fragility and disintegration that is seldom achieved in Bacon's single panel portraits. The idea for depicting himself and his sitters in such a sequential way appealed to Bacon because, as he once explained, "I see every image all the time in a shifting way and almost in shifting sequences. So that one can take it from more or less what is called ordinary figuration to a very, very far point." (op. cit.,, p. 21.)
In Three Studies for a Self-Portrait, Bacon depicts himself as a substantial and very material presence set against a dark and sombre background of seemingly infinite space. Using strong sweeping brushstrokes that appear to both mould and invade the artist's features, Bacon creates a series of images that in the restlessness of their distortions seem to suggest a series of alternating moods and an atmosphere of intense psychological unease. The sequential nature of the triptych echoes moreover the repetitive imagery of Muybridge's stop-frame photography, which Bacon so often used as a source for his work.
Three Studies for a Self-Portrait is a disturbingly honest depiction of the artist as a human ape, probing the mystery and meaninglessness of his own existence. "I think of life as meaningless; but we give it meaning during our own existence." Bacon once commented, "We create certain attitudes which give it a meaning while we exist, though they in themselves are meaningless, really." (ibid, p. 133).
In Three Studies for a Self-Portrait, the material and the non-material meet in what appears to be three fleeting flash-bulb moments that hauntingly capture in paint the very essence and vitality of Bacon's psychological and physical presence. Although each portrait differs from the others, the radiating lines, smudges and blurred distortions of all three seem to communicate with one another between the paintings so that something of Bacon's living presence seems to be magically recorded by the work. "Of course", Bacon once commented, "what in a curious way one's always hoping to do is to paint the one picture which will annihilate all the other ones, to concentrate everything into one painting. But actually in the series one picture reflects on the other continuously and sometimes they're better in series than they are separately because, unfortunately, I've never yet been able to make the one image that sums up all the others. So one image against the other seems to be able to say the thing more". (ibid, p. 22).
For Francis Bacon, whose uniquely disturbing and timeless art seems in many ways to have stronger connections to the traditions of the Old Masters than to many of the movements and 'isms' of the twentieth century, self-portraiture was intrinsically connected to the artist's very strong awareness of the passing of time and the presence of death within everything in life.
Formerly in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Three Studies for a Self-Portrait belongs to an outstanding series of self-portrait heads that Bacon produced in the 1970s and is one of only six small-scale triptychs devoted wholly to this subject. It portrays the distorted but recogniseable features of Bacon's owl-like face in three varying degrees of twisted mutilation. The sequential effect of these three contrasting depictions of artist's face endows the complete work with a sense of motion, fragility and disintegration that is seldom achieved in Bacon's single panel portraits. The idea for depicting himself and his sitters in such a sequential way appealed to Bacon because, as he once explained, "I see every image all the time in a shifting way and almost in shifting sequences. So that one can take it from more or less what is called ordinary figuration to a very, very far point." (op. cit.,, p. 21.)
In Three Studies for a Self-Portrait, Bacon depicts himself as a substantial and very material presence set against a dark and sombre background of seemingly infinite space. Using strong sweeping brushstrokes that appear to both mould and invade the artist's features, Bacon creates a series of images that in the restlessness of their distortions seem to suggest a series of alternating moods and an atmosphere of intense psychological unease. The sequential nature of the triptych echoes moreover the repetitive imagery of Muybridge's stop-frame photography, which Bacon so often used as a source for his work.
Three Studies for a Self-Portrait is a disturbingly honest depiction of the artist as a human ape, probing the mystery and meaninglessness of his own existence. "I think of life as meaningless; but we give it meaning during our own existence." Bacon once commented, "We create certain attitudes which give it a meaning while we exist, though they in themselves are meaningless, really." (ibid, p. 133).
In Three Studies for a Self-Portrait, the material and the non-material meet in what appears to be three fleeting flash-bulb moments that hauntingly capture in paint the very essence and vitality of Bacon's psychological and physical presence. Although each portrait differs from the others, the radiating lines, smudges and blurred distortions of all three seem to communicate with one another between the paintings so that something of Bacon's living presence seems to be magically recorded by the work. "Of course", Bacon once commented, "what in a curious way one's always hoping to do is to paint the one picture which will annihilate all the other ones, to concentrate everything into one painting. But actually in the series one picture reflects on the other continuously and sometimes they're better in series than they are separately because, unfortunately, I've never yet been able to make the one image that sums up all the others. So one image against the other seems to be able to say the thing more". (ibid, p. 22).