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10/12/2003

Francis Bacon

IVAM Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia

LO SAGRADO Y LO PROFANO (The Sacred and the Profane)

Curators: Michael Peppiatt

Organised by: Institut Valencià d'Art Modern IVAM

Almost every important Francis Bacon exhibition to date has taken the form of a classic retrospective, with all major themes and phases represented and a marked emphasis on the large triptychs and the latter half of the artist's career. It was largely Bacon himself who established this increasingly grandiloquent and rigid format for his museum shows; and during his lifetime no major exhibition deviated from it. As a result, there has evolved a conventional, not to say 'official', way of presenting a body of paintings which nevertheless continues, in a subterranean fashion, to reverberate and disturb as intensely as ever.
For the present exhibition, curated by the leading Bacon expert, Michael Peppiatt, IVAM will be presenting some fifty historic Bacon compositions, including no fewer than four large triptychs, lent by major museums and private collectors in Europe, America and the Far East. The success of this particular presentation of Bacon's work is in part the result of the unusual theme -'Francis Bacon: The Sacred and Profane'- adopted by the exhibition's organizers.

One aspect of Bacon never explored before is the apparent contradiction between the artist's vehemently expressed atheism and his profound attraction to two of Christianity's most potent symbols: the Crucifixion and the Pope. Bacon in fact began his career by painting several versions of the Crucifixion, then returned to the subject at different intervals throughout the rest of his painting life. As for the Pope, the artist became, in his own words, 'obsessed' by Velázquez's great portrait of Pope Innocent X, and was moved to paint numerous variations on this grand image right through the immensely fertile middle period of his career. From this time (1949-1971) no fewer than forty-five pictures on this theme have survived (several more are known to have been deliberately destroyed). At the same time, Bacon celebrated the most 'profane' acts of man, coupled in the grass, pinned to a bed by a syringe or screaming into an empty, airless space. From image to image Bacon confounds established notions of the sacred and the profane by transgressing both and inventing his own shifting, unpredictable categories. Thus a crucifixion flaunts butcher's meat or a snarling animal, while two muscled bodies joined in lust are conveyed with the tender sanctity of a Pietà.

An exhibition of this kind will not necessarily take us to the mysterious core of Bacon's paintings; they are infinitely elusive and, like the sphinx that became one of Bacon's emblems, they raise questions to which we have at best a faltering reply. But the exhibition will bring us face to face with unexpected and discomfiting reflections. By reconsidering the way we look at Bacon, we may in fact be reconsidering the terms on which we live.

The exhibition will include three of Bacon's Crucifixions (including the iconic 'Fragment of a Crucifixion' from the Van Abbemuseum in Holland). It will also feature nine of Bacon's variations on the papal theme, lent by prominent private collectors and such museums as the Mannheim Kunsthalle, the Sainsbury Centre (U.K.) and the National Gallery of Canada. To preside over Bacon's Popes, the exhibition will present the National Gallery of Washington's 'Pope Innocent X' (c1640), by Velázquez's circle.

Bacon was also fascinated by ancient classical beliefs, particularly by the myths and rituals as expressed and enacted in Greek tragedy. He frequently reread Aeschylus' 'Oresteia', which he said 'triggers off all kinds of images in me'. This interest culminated in the great 'Triptych Inspired by the "Oresteia" of Aeschylus', executed in 1981, which has been lent to the exhibition by the Astrup Fearnley Collection in Oslo. While images of this kind testify to Bacon's deep awareness of religious belief, many others - such as his solitary, naked figures trapped in airless spaces - appear to stem from the artist's conviction of life's futility, that (in the artist's words) 'we come from nothing and go to nothing'. Yet, profane as 'Man Kneeling in the Grass' (private collection) or 'Lying Figure' (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía) seem to be, they have a remarkable physical presence which transcends Bacon's own avowed nihilism.

The fully illustrated catalogue includes essays on Bacon's Popes by Kosme de Barañano, director of IVAM, and Hugh M. Davies, director of the Museum of San Diego, California, as well as an essay on the Tradition of Art and Bacon's Triptychs by Barbara Steffen, curator of the Francis Bacon exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and an interview with Massimo Martino, an international art dealer. Michael Peppiatt has written the main catalogue essay, Francis Bacon: The Sacred and the Profane' as well as a 'Portrait of the Artist At Work'. Also included, for the first time in Spanish, are three interviews with Bacon which Peppiatt recorded during his long friendship with the artist.

The is the first retrospective of the artist's work to be held in Spain for many years. Although Bacon was deeply attached to Spain and to Spanish culture - notably to the work of Velázquez, Goya and Picasso - his paintings have not been seen frequently in this country. In fact, the only other museum exhibition ever to have taken place in Spain dates back to 1978, when a Bacon show was put on at the Fundación Juan March in Madrid and then at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona.

After Valencia, 'Francis Bacon: The Sacred and the Profane' will travel to the Musée Maillol in Paris, where it will be shown from 7 April to 30 June 2004.

Image: Fragment of a Crucifixion, 1950

IVAM- Institut Valencià d'Art Modern
Guillem de Castro 118, 46003 Valencia
Telf: +34 96 38 67680
Fax: +34 96 39 21094

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