Statements, Letters, Studio Notes and Selected Interviews
Edited, Introduced, and Annotated by Michael Peppiatt
Foreword by Colm Tóibín
Published by Thames & Hudson, 16 May 2024
Price: £40
480 pages, 209 illustrations
Available from Thames & Hudson
Francis Bacon: A Self-Portrait in Words is a meticulously collated anthology that provides a primary source into the words of the artist. Edited by Michael Peppiatt, this compendium – the most comprehensive to date – will no doubt become an essential reference for anyone seeking to hear Bacon in the raw, making it invaluable to both scholars and laypersons alike, who want to hear Bacon ‘in his own words’. Yet in some of the statements, Bacon was not always a ‘man of his word’ such as in the following proclamation:
“I should love to have someone like Eliot did with Pound, editing his work. Someone who would say ‘do this’, ‘don’t do that.’” (Statements to Michael Peppiatt: On Literature, p. 62). I did this with Bacon on seeing his freshly painted breasts-headed right-panel of Diptych Study of the Human Body in 1982, asking him to remove the red arrow and Letraset; he never did, and I never saw him again.
Diptych 1982–84: Study from the Human Body 1982–84; Study of the
Human Body – from a Drawing by Ingres 1982 (Cat. no. 84-02)
Whilst many of the statements and interviews have appeared in print, such as On Matthew Smith, On Distortion and Reality, On Art as a Game, On Giacometti as a Draughtsman, Statements to Peter Beard, and Interview with Hugh M, Davies, others have not, such as the illuminating interviews with Julian Jebb (1965), and Pierre Koralnik (1964):
“I’m almost an alcoholic, but even so, I don’t know, you have to remake yourself from time to time with drink or drugs. My life is a reflection.” (Bacon to Koralnik, 1964).
Almost? Bacon was essentially an alcoholic. Yet Peppiatt and other Bacon scholars have been rather coy and furtive when addressing this ‘brutality of fact’ about Bacon. What is missing from the anthology are the transcripts from a conversation between Bacon and Burroughs (Bacon meets Burroughs, Arena, 1982), where we see Bacon drinking in the morning, a true sign of alcoholism; the following has some missing words, due to Bacon’s slurred speech:
“I was going to get a drink… I don’t smoke; I drink too much so; generally; it’s reason I haven’t have a car; reason I didn’t keep the place down... I believe it’s more difficult to stop than drinking; I’ve never really tried to stop drinking yet.” (Francis Bacon, Bacon meets Burroughs, Arena BBC 2, November 20, 1982). I suspect that the reason this has never appeared in print is that it such slurred speech became lost in translation and transcription.
What makes this compendious constellation so valuable are the letters, many of which have never been published before.
Bacon’s letters come from a plethora of archival and private sources, including: The Orwell Archive, UCL, The Tate Archive, Royal College of Art Archive, The Dupin Family, Collection of Jon Lys-Turner, Collection of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, Roald Dahl Estate, Paul Bowles Collection, The Barry Joule Collection, Modern Papers, Bodleian Library, Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation and the Estate of Francis Bacon.
Peppiatt acknowledges that the letters had been published incomplete, “in full awareness that others may still exist, whether hiding on plain sight or lying forgotten in an old correspondence file or undisturbed attic.”
Indeed: I have seen lists, letters, envelopes with biro writing and sketching on them in Bacon’s hand, from the archive of jazz-violinist and composer, the late Eddie Gray [owned by April Hunter, partner of Gray], a friend of Bacon, Edwards, and Peppiatt. There was a typed list of gifts given to Edwards from Bacon, including a 1970s car; also there were six X-rays of Bacon’s lungs, casino chips, rhino whips and shards from Bacon’s studio mirror; and last, but not least, Bacon’s couch.
Many of the letters and postcards sent to Denis Wirth-Miller were just about money matters, both borrowing and lending [from the Collection of Jon Lys-Turner]:
Dear Dennis
Here is the £100 I owe you
Francis [9 May 1977]
Dear Dennis
I would be very glad if you would send me the £55 I lent you last Sunday
Yours Francis [Sunday 5th]
Dear Dennis
A cheque of £100 for the money you lent me at Charlie Chesters.
All best wishes Francis [1970s?]
One of the most moving and revealing passages is an extract of a letter to Eric Allden:
“Last night I walked down to the sea: it was so calm and beautiful… I cannot stay in the big room here as the twilight falls. The hills seem to press down into the room to fill it with some primeval despair. Trees grow lecherously into the walls and the sea creeps slowly across the floor …and the night comes down, the mountains are drawn and once again my mind becomes normal, Eric, there is a strange melancholy about the twilight – you too, I’m sure have felt it, the time when the sinister Dionysian side of nature predominates most.” [Killary Bay, Ireland, October 1929].
A letter to Bacon’s doctor, Paul Brass, triggered my memory of seeing a series of the artist’s X-rays courtesy of Eddie Gray and John Edwards, [in the collection of April Hunter]:
Dear Paul,
I hope you will excuse me not having the x-ray at the moment I am in the middle of some work I have to finish the tablets you gave me to ease the pain have helped enormously but I am sure the whole thing is part of old age aches and pains of rheumatic disorders – thank you Paul for all you have done for me and I will go and have the x-rays in a week or two if you think it is necessary.
All very best wishes. Yours Francis [Friday 20th March 1981] (page 263)
A letter to Sonia Orwell is worth quoting in full regrading Bacon’s Nietzschean aristocratic radicalism, counter to the clichéd misconception of Bacon the existentialist outsider (misleadingly and inaccurately affiliating Bacon with Beckett and Giacometti (page 145, Letter):
Dear Sonia,
I have worried ever since I was so abrupt and rude at Alfreds – but I have a deep suspicion of the people who back the helpless in their search for power without really knowing what the powerless want and if they were to gain power they would not impose a greater tyranny than we have already – I am only echoing Nietzsche when I say this – but I cannot help having a deep suspicion of the romanticism of so many people we know who rush to the help of the underdog without really knowing their motives and with my perhaps cynical mind I tend to believe it to be more out of the enchantment of their self-esteem than true concern with the problem. Anyhow I hope Sonia we will meet soon.
Love, Francis [no address: 26/6/1968]
Peppiatt has been sensitive “to stay as true to Bacon’s original wording as possible and have left misspellings, mistakes in punctuation, and other errors as found, unless they obscure the meaning of the text.” Yet the mistakes in punctuation are not always mistakes for Bacon who spoke and wrote often without punctuation; for many letters are written, refreshingly, without punctuation, sometimes reminding one of the final forty pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Visually, some of the Studio Notes look like poetry, and read like poetry, and are unwittingly laid out like poetry; the following studio note is pure poetry: [page 377]
Dec 17th
Study of Walking figure against
meat
in circle
-
Owls with meat in circle
-
Figure at wash basin with boxing
figure in circle
-
Figures fucking in middle of
carpet possibly
chair as in Vatican picture at side
-
Velazquez pope in centre of
Circular painting
-
Figure on seat with arms raised
as ape use
splashed on body
-
figure seated in middle of circle
looking back
Over shoulder Think of figure in grass photo
Figure lying on sofa. Done -
Disappointingly, the photographic reproductions of Bacon are extremely bad and often out of focus, surprising for Thames & Hudson. However, the reproductions of the letters, postcards and studio notes are far clearer. This aside, Peppiatt has produced a reference reservoir-cum-treasure trove of Bacon in his own words which serve as a primary source for Bacon scholarship.
Alexander Verney-Elliott, June 2024
