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Lot Essay
'I've done a lot of self-portraits, really because people have been dying around me like flies and I've had nobody else left to paint but myself..... 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 quoted in 1975 'Interview with David Sylvester', reproduced in D. Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, Interviews with Francis Bacon, London 1990, pp. 129-133)
Executed in 1979 when the artist was seventy years old, Three Studies for a Self-Portrait depicts three different portraits of Bacon's own owl-like and surprisingly youthful looking face against a garish and seemingly infinite expanse of orange. Painted in a series of dry sweeping brushstrokes that have been blurred and distorted with ribbed patterns of a deep pink these three recognisable images are isolated and enhanced by the warm hue of this vibrant and yet strangely sterile colour. Bacon often remarked that this acidic and somewhat unnatural shade of orange was his favourite colour, it is one that he often used with particularly dramatic effects in many of his most celebrated paintings and its use here in a self-portrait is consequently both significant and appropriate.
Often referred to as triptychs, Bacon's 'serial' portraits were for the artist a unique means by which he felt he came closest to capturing the essence of the reality he wished to portray. "I don't know that I should talk about a triptych in my case," he warned, "Of course, there are three canvases and you can link that to a long-standing tradition. The primitives often used the triptych format, but as far as my work is concerned, a triptych corresponds more to the idea of a succession of images on film. There are frequently three canvases, but there is no reason why I couldn't continue and add more." (cited in M. Archimbaud, Francis Bacon in conversation with Michel Archimbaud, London 1993, p. 165)
Recalling the similarity of his vision to photographic techniques Bacon once recalled that images appeared to him like a "succession of slides dropping down before his eyes". Whilst such descriptions inevitably call to mind the techniques of photography and in particular the serial imagery of Eadweard Muybridge, Bacon drew attention to the fact that his mental imagery was not merely sequential, but constantly shifting and therefore best served by a "series" of paintings. "I see every image all the time in a shifting way and almost in shifting sequences," he explained to David Sylvester. "So that one can take it from more or less what is called ordinary figuration to a very, very far point..... in the series one picture reflects on the other continuously and sometimes they're better in series than they are separately.... one image against the other seems to be able to say the thing more. " (op. cit., pp. 21-22)
While Bacon has cited photography and photographs as an important "trigger" and a means by which he could "wander into the image and unlock what I think of as its reality more than I can by looking at it", distortion, usually made with a deliberate encouragement of chance or the accident, was another crucial means by which he rendered the vitality of the human figure and the violent immediacy and absurdity of reality. Made instinctively "off" his "nervous system", the irrationally made mark is central to the highly existential nature of Bacon's art.
In a portrait, such as the present work, however, "in spite of theoretically longing for the image to be made up entirely of irrational marks, " Bacon explained, "inevitably illustration has to come into it to make certain parts of the head and face which, if one left them out, would then only be making an abstract design... Of course one does put in such things as ears and eyes. But then one would like to put them in as irrationally as possible. And the only reason for this irrationality is that, if it does come about, it brings the force of the image over very much more strongly than if one just sat down and illustrated the appearance." (David Sylvester, p. 126)
Indeed, such was Bacon's dedication to producing the "irrational mark" that, as John Richardson has recalled, the artist would actually practice the techniques involved. Describing how Bacon used to let his stubble grow for three of four days so that its texture would resemble the rough surface of the unprimed canvas on which he preferred to paint, Richardson has related how Bacon would often rehearse his brushstrokes on his own face in front of the mirror: "those strange revolving brushstrokes, that are so familiar from his pictures, would be rehearsed with Max Factor pancake make-up. He had a series of these Max Factor pots and he would take one and do a sort of smear across his face, and these are the smears that you see on so many of the faces of those early paintings. " (Daniel Farson...GGL, cited in C. Domino, Francis Bacon: Taking Reality by Surprise, London 1996)
The sharp and coldly observed details of the three alert portrait heads in Three Studies for a Self-Portrait reveal that although Bacon may have detested his own features, he was intensely aware of them. Depicting the artist's head facing three different directions, the present work resembles less a series of police "mug shots" than a series of film stills that convey a sense of continuous mental activity and nervous movement. Each canvas seems to represent a slice from the artist's life as if it had been dissected and laid bare under a microscope, his constantly shifting and intensely alive features conjuring a powerful existential human presence in the midst of an alienating and somewhat surreal orange void.
Executed in 1979 when the artist was seventy years old, Three Studies for a Self-Portrait depicts three different portraits of Bacon's own owl-like and surprisingly youthful looking face against a garish and seemingly infinite expanse of orange. Painted in a series of dry sweeping brushstrokes that have been blurred and distorted with ribbed patterns of a deep pink these three recognisable images are isolated and enhanced by the warm hue of this vibrant and yet strangely sterile colour. Bacon often remarked that this acidic and somewhat unnatural shade of orange was his favourite colour, it is one that he often used with particularly dramatic effects in many of his most celebrated paintings and its use here in a self-portrait is consequently both significant and appropriate.
Often referred to as triptychs, Bacon's 'serial' portraits were for the artist a unique means by which he felt he came closest to capturing the essence of the reality he wished to portray. "I don't know that I should talk about a triptych in my case," he warned, "Of course, there are three canvases and you can link that to a long-standing tradition. The primitives often used the triptych format, but as far as my work is concerned, a triptych corresponds more to the idea of a succession of images on film. There are frequently three canvases, but there is no reason why I couldn't continue and add more." (cited in M. Archimbaud, Francis Bacon in conversation with Michel Archimbaud, London 1993, p. 165)
Recalling the similarity of his vision to photographic techniques Bacon once recalled that images appeared to him like a "succession of slides dropping down before his eyes". Whilst such descriptions inevitably call to mind the techniques of photography and in particular the serial imagery of Eadweard Muybridge, Bacon drew attention to the fact that his mental imagery was not merely sequential, but constantly shifting and therefore best served by a "series" of paintings. "I see every image all the time in a shifting way and almost in shifting sequences," he explained to David Sylvester. "So that one can take it from more or less what is called ordinary figuration to a very, very far point..... in the series one picture reflects on the other continuously and sometimes they're better in series than they are separately.... one image against the other seems to be able to say the thing more. " (op. cit., pp. 21-22)
While Bacon has cited photography and photographs as an important "trigger" and a means by which he could "wander into the image and unlock what I think of as its reality more than I can by looking at it", distortion, usually made with a deliberate encouragement of chance or the accident, was another crucial means by which he rendered the vitality of the human figure and the violent immediacy and absurdity of reality. Made instinctively "off" his "nervous system", the irrationally made mark is central to the highly existential nature of Bacon's art.
In a portrait, such as the present work, however, "in spite of theoretically longing for the image to be made up entirely of irrational marks, " Bacon explained, "inevitably illustration has to come into it to make certain parts of the head and face which, if one left them out, would then only be making an abstract design... Of course one does put in such things as ears and eyes. But then one would like to put them in as irrationally as possible. And the only reason for this irrationality is that, if it does come about, it brings the force of the image over very much more strongly than if one just sat down and illustrated the appearance." (David Sylvester, p. 126)
Indeed, such was Bacon's dedication to producing the "irrational mark" that, as John Richardson has recalled, the artist would actually practice the techniques involved. Describing how Bacon used to let his stubble grow for three of four days so that its texture would resemble the rough surface of the unprimed canvas on which he preferred to paint, Richardson has related how Bacon would often rehearse his brushstrokes on his own face in front of the mirror: "those strange revolving brushstrokes, that are so familiar from his pictures, would be rehearsed with Max Factor pancake make-up. He had a series of these Max Factor pots and he would take one and do a sort of smear across his face, and these are the smears that you see on so many of the faces of those early paintings. " (Daniel Farson...GGL, cited in C. Domino, Francis Bacon: Taking Reality by Surprise, London 1996)
The sharp and coldly observed details of the three alert portrait heads in Three Studies for a Self-Portrait reveal that although Bacon may have detested his own features, he was intensely aware of them. Depicting the artist's head facing three different directions, the present work resembles less a series of police "mug shots" than a series of film stills that convey a sense of continuous mental activity and nervous movement. Each canvas seems to represent a slice from the artist's life as if it had been dissected and laid bare under a microscope, his constantly shifting and intensely alive features conjuring a powerful existential human presence in the midst of an alienating and somewhat surreal orange void.