Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

The images above are photographs of printed matter found on the floor of Francis Bacon's studio. They include a first edition copy of Robert Frank's The Americans. Below is a description of his studio by Dr. Margarita Cappock: Francis Bacon lived and worked in 7 Reece Mews, South Kensington from 1961 until his death in 1992. The Reece Mews studio was of immense significance for the artist and some of his finest paintings were realised in this small room. Photographs of the studio taken in 1964 show that layers of material had already begun to accumulate. The studio was to become Bacon’s complete visual world. Of his cluttered studio, Bacon said “I feel at home here in this chaos because chaos suggests images to me.” He rarely painted from life and the heaps of torn photographs, fragments of illustrations, books, catalogues, magazines and newspapers provided nearly all of his visual sources. Commenting on the wealth of photographic material in his studio, Bacon said that he looked at photographs for inspiration in the way that one looks up meanings in a dictionary. Photographs by John Deakin, Cecil Beaton, Peter Beard, Henri Cartier Bresson, Peter Stark and many others provide a fascinating insight into both the bohemian milieu in which Bacon operated and the artist’s method of manipulating his source material. On the studio floor, reproductions of fine art paintings jostled with illustrations of crime scenes, skin diseases, film stars, athletes and other imagery which clearly appealed to Bacon’s artistic imagination. Books and magazines on subjects including art, sport, crime, history, photography, cinema, bullfighting, wildlife and the supernatural were found in precarious piles on the studio floor and highlight the eclectic nature of Bacon’s influences. Some of the most significant studio items include seventy works on paper and one hundred slashed canvases. The vast array of artist’s materials, household paint pots, used and unused paint tubes, paint brushes, cut off ends of corduroy trousers and cashmere sweaters record the diversity of Bacon’s techniques. Other items found in the studio include the artist’s correspondence, a collection of vinyl records and some furniture. Bacon: Chance enables me to make images that my intellect could never make. Bacon: I’m just trying to make images as accurately off my nervous system as I can. I don’t even know what half of them mean. Bacon: I have no idea what any artist is trying to say – except the more banal artists. A story about Francis Bacon told by poet and writer Anthony Cronin: "Perhaps the most revealing story I personally remember Bacon telling about his early childhood in Ireland concerned a maid or a nanny - I had the impression of a sort of Irish mother's help - who was left in charge of him for long periods when his parents were absent from the house. She had a soldier boyfriend who came visiting at these times; and of course, the couple wanted to be alone. But Francis was a jealous and endlessly demanding little boy who would constantly interrupt their lovemaking on one pretext or another. As a result, she took to locking him in a cupboard at the top of the stairs when her boyfriend arrived. Confined in the darkness of this cupboard Francis would scream - perhaps for several hours at a time - but since he was out of earshot of the happy courting couple, completely in vain." "That cupboard," Bacon apparently said years later, "was the making of me." Bacon: I am very influenced by places — by the atmosphere of a room… I just knew from the moment I came here (Reece Mews Studio, Kensington, London) that I would be able to work here.