PAINTER

BORN. DUBLIN 28.10.09. DIED. MADRID 28.04.92.

Cover Independent Magazine June 2003. photo: Francis Giacobetti.

REECE MEWS

'' Actually, I'm the most ordinary person possible. Its just that I like throwing myself in the gutter. Every artist wants to throw himself into the gutter. Its part of his life, its a necessity. You might say that I lead a gilded gutter life, I drift from bar to bar, from gambling place to gambling place, and when I don't do those things, I go home and paint some pictures. I am completely amoral. If I hadn't painted I would have been a criminal....I have always known life was absurb. Life is nothing but a series of sensations.......Life is so meaningless we might as well try to make ourselves extraordinary...I think of life as meaningless and yet it excites me. I always think that something marvellous is about to happen. How can I trap this transient thing? ''

...Francis Bacon in conversations.

elf into the gutter. Its part of his life, its a necessity. You might say that I lead a gilded gutter life, I drift from bar to bar, from gambling place to gambling place and when I don't do those things, I go home and paint some pictures." Francis Bacon in conversation.

April Hunter

Meeting Francis Bacon

I first met Francis Bacon in the summer of 1985 in the Golden Lion public house in Soho. Growing up in Yorkshire I'd read about the Golden Lion in a sleazy Sunday tabloid. It was an establishment frequented by rent boys and there was scandal over the Queen's Guard been seen there too. I thought if I ever went to live in London it would definitely be on my hit list of places to visit. With rough trade and men in uniforms looking for sex...How could I resist. As fate would have it and a few years later, I arrived at Kings Cross station. With a make-up bag, no money and without a place to stay, I hadn't a clue what kind of future I had....I only knew I had to get out of Yorkshire. After finding employment and somewhere to live, it wasn't too long before I found myself in the Golden Lion pub. Well what a shock that was, it was nothing like I'd imagined or a place I'd ever be rushing back to in a hurry. It was so rough and seedy it could have been 1885.

Francis Bacon was been honoured with a second retrospective at the Tate Gallery. I was a regular at the Tate but not familiar with Bacon's work. I was usually in the Pre-Raphaelite room with headphones on listening to classical music. I'd heard about the Bacon exhibition and read about this controversial painter and his disturbing images. So after looking at a few paintings reproduced in various magazines and books I decided to go and have a look for myself. I really wasn't prepared for what I was about to see.

I was awestruck, mesmerized and totally seduced. It was hypnotically beautiful...I was speechless. When I walked into the exhibition the first painting I saw was....Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. It was much smaller then I expected but intensely powerful and effectually mind-blowing. It was a profound experience and the shock to my nervous system was positively electric. When I left the Tate I was floating... Later I spoke with my friend Eddie Gray. I was amazed when he told me he knew Francis and that they were good friends. I asked Eddie if he could introduce me. There are few people I would want to meet but I had to meet Francis Bacon. So one afternoon Eddie took me off to find him, we went into Soho and to places where we might have found Francis having a drink. I was hoping to meet him in the Colony Room but where was he..... The Golden Lion! Well again I was unprepared, for the second time in my life, I was lost for words. I shook his hand and said hello and not too long after I shook his hand again and said goodbye. Francis had the most incredible aura around him, I found his presence both masculine and feminine and very seductive. The 28th April 1992 was the day I heard of Francis Bacon's death. It's a day I'll never forget....a day I would have been celebrating my birthday. I'm not easily impressed and believe communication to be the essence of human existence.....I have a love-hate relationship with life and people and before Francis Bacon I was fascinated with the life of Greta Garbo. Here is my tribute to them both. The Enigma and The Genius.

The Enigma and The Genius by April Hunter.

ONLY FRANCIS BACON IS MORE WONDERFUL THAN YOU

Sprayed graffitti on Serge Gainsbourg's wall.

In the Barry Joule collection, there is an 'overpainted' photograph of Garbo. Bacon did this in excitement after a memorable day when he shared a car with her from Wiltshire to London. This could be true but I've yet to find any evidence, I do know that Francis painted Cecil Beaton and Beaton did live in Wiltshire. Its also well documented that Cecil Beaton and Greta Garbo were lovers.

When Francis finished Cecil Beaton's portrait he declared it the best thing he had ever done. When Cecil saw it I think he went into shock. Read about Beaton's reaction to his unflattering portrait in, Francis Bacon His Life and Violent Times. ' When Beaton told Augustus John how Bacon had made him look like a raw piece of offal, John replied that he deserved it for sitting for Bacon and added sarcastically, ' These are the prerogatives of genius.' I read that Madonna is an art collector and loves Bacon's work, she and Guy Richie live in Beaton's arcadian paradise, Ashcombe House in Wiltshire. Unfortunately for Madonna and other Bacon admirers Francis destroyed this painting. I recently saw a programme on Madonna and Ashcombe Estate...and it really is beautiful, it also mentioned Madonna's ' art collection ' and I was surprised she still didn't own a Bacon. John Edwards liked my juxtaposition, The Enigma and Genius and I think Francis would have liked it too. In 1920's Paris and Berlin, Francis was known to frequent the transvestite bars and cabaret clubs. Bacon loved wearing fishnets and make-up...there's some funny stories about this and discriptions of him praticing his make-up technique and brushstrokes in the biographys. Daniel Farson told Eddie he had a photograph of Francis... in drag! Unfortunately Daniel died before we got a chance to see it. I spent many years performing in drag cabaret. While Francis was back in Berlin with John, and Clare was in Berlin with Bowie, I was working hard doing three shows a night in Hamburg...cabaret was much better in Hamburg than Berlin in the eighties, the wall was still up in Berlin so it was easier for entertainers and transexual strippers to work in Hamburg. Francis once said if he had not been a painter, he would have been a criminal...I've always thought he'd have made a fantastic drag-queen...his make-up would have been flawless his wit sharp and his timing perfect...and like his paintings...original.

From A To B with...

Eddie Gray/Violinist. John Edwards/FB's Friend and Muse. Clare Shenstone/Portrait Painter.

There is no shortage of interviews, critical studies, images and websites that aren't readily available about Francis Bacon. I would recommend Francis-Bacon.com for a list of bibliography, though this is by no means a complete list, my favourite books are the three biographys. Francis Bacon Anatomy of an Enigma by Michael Peppiatt. The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson and Francis Bacon His Life and Violent Times by Andrew Sinclair. An absolute classic book is David Sylvester's The Brutality of Fact Interviews with Francis Bacon. Ernst van Alphen , Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self is a good book, ' Bacon's work is founded upon the way that each of us carves our identity, our ' self ', from the inchoate evidence of our senses, using the conventions of representation as tools. It is in his warping of these conventions of the senses - rather than in the superficial distortion of his images - that Bacon most radically confronts ' art ', and ourselves as individuals '...REAKTION BOOKS. I'd also look at AlexAlienArt.com for news and articles. Here, through unseen photographs I'd like to show you reflections I've shared with some of his closest friends. I am a complete novice regards constructing this website but through trial and error, I hope to offer you...something a little different . I will be updating my site often and re-checking for any mistakes. My site is not technically brilliant or sophisticated but I hope you'll find your way about... enjoy... and that you'll find something here of interest. When ever I've visited another country, I've always hoped they'd be a Bacon painting I'd not seen before, so I've listed here, paintings in Public Collections from around the world. Paintings that are listed in exhibitions...from a 'Private Collection' always interest me. Who might own one and why? Carlo Ponti husband of Sophia Loren has the largest private collection of Bacon's in Italy. This story I read while researching tickled me. I found it in Holy Terror, Andy Warhol Close Up. In November 1974 Andy Warhol meets Emelda Marcos. The year before she had electrified the art world by asking for prices at the Francis Bacon retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum. When told that the Met paintings were actually not for sale but that there was a Bacon show on at the Marlborough Gallery, Emelda had immediately motorcaded down to 57th Street, and the buzz was, snapped up twenty large canvases at $200,000 each. She really was bringing home the Bacon. A fetish for Bacon as well as shoes. Francis Bacon paintings reproduce beautifully on the internet but seeing one in the flesh, getting up close, it has to be experienced...you might not like what you see, or feel, but its a visual sensation you'll not forget.

Study from the Human Body, 1949

''France is certainly the country I prefer of all the countries I know...I think Paris is the most beautiful city in the world...I don't know why the French seem to like me...Voila. Je me fais jeune.''

BAK-EN, BAK-EN, BAK-EN

...the Parisians chanted.

Study for Self Portrait 1980.

Francis Bacon was seventy-seven when I met him, though he looked about twenty-five years younger. Bacon reminds me of one of Oscar Wilde's books, The Picture Of Dorian Grey. Where in the story a beautiful young man whose looks never fade, despite the depraved life he lives... and in the attic his portrait grows more and more hideous with every passing year. In Bacon's portrait he gets younger looking, in his last self portrait he looks about thirty. He did say that he hated his own face but some of his self portraits are very beautiful and among my favourite paintings. This reminds me of something I read years ago... What do we, any of us live for but our allusions, and what do we ask of others, that we be allowed to keep them. On Francis Bacon's luminous vitality... he used to tell a story about meeting a Parisian prostitute in the 1920's...She said: '' Listen, Francees, je me fais jeune - I just make myself young,'' Bacon would repeat, laughter bubbling up at the absurb simplicity of it all. ' Viola. Je me fais jeune.'

Francis Bacon Quotes...

photo Francis Bacon by John Deakin.

April Hunter @

In the Barry Joule collection, there is an 'overpainted' photograph of Garbo. Bacon did this in excitement after a memorable day when he shared a car with her from Wiltshire to London.