Books on Francis Bacon

With contributions by Maria Balaska, Amanda J Harrison, Martin Harrison, and Darian Leader, this book reveals previously unpublished material from the legendary interviews between Francis Bacon and David Sylvester — probably the most wide-ranging discussions anyone ever had with the artist.

Featuring over 15,000 unpublished words from Bacon, new revelations from associates, recent discoveries and rare photographs of destroyed works, this landmark publication offers an abundance of new insights into Francis Bacon’s life and approach to his art.

This book, edited by Majid Boustany, who created the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, offers a new perspective on Francis Bacon. Focusing on the artist’s unique relationship with France and Monaco, it combines illuminating essays by art historians with accounts by people who were close to the artist. In addition to contributions by Elsa Boustany, Majid Boustany, Dr Margarita Cappock, Dr Rebecca Daniels, Milan Garcin, Michel Giniès, Martin Harrison, Yves Peyré, Sophie Pretorius and Jacques Saraben, it features a previously unpublished conversation between Yves Peyré, a writer and close friend of Francis Bacon, and Majid Boustany, who talks about his first encounter with Francis Bacon’s work and how he came to set up the Foundation.

In English

A French edition was also published under the title Francis Bacon sous un nouveau jour.

Bacon’s works often lost and gained a great deal after leaving his studio, as he frequently found ways to alter, improve or destroy his paintings, even as they hung on the walls of gallerists and collectors. From the sudden absence of a cigarette in Study of a Portrait of a Man, 1967, to the removal of Richard Chopping’s central figure in the centre panel of Triptych 1974-77, Bacon’s revisions vary dramatically in scale and intention. Diptychs become triptychs, seemingly important details disappear without ceremony, and figures travel between works like ghosts.

Many artists make changes to their paintings while they are in progress, but in few instances do photographic records exist. Francis Bacon’s oeuvre provides a rare exception. With first and final versions presented side by side for the first time, Revisions: Francis Bacon in the Act of Painting provides detailed, never-before-seen insights into Bacon the creator: his process, his intentions, and what does and doesn’t make a ‘Bacon’, according to the artist himself.

This intimate biography of Francis Bacon, entitled Francis Bacon: Revelations, was published on 21 January 2021, after ten years of research and writing.

The authors, who had won a Pulitzer Prize for their earlier book de Kooning: An American Master, present an original, detailed portrait of Francis Bacon based on in-depth research, numerous documents and hundreds of interviews. Revelations is a successful retelling of the story of a sickly boy who became one of the most remarkable artists and cultural figures of his time.

The biography presents new information about Bacon’s early years as a self-described asthmatic child and goes on to recount his astonishing breakthrough in 1944 with Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. It then explores the ensuing decades and Bacon’s emergence as one of the great iconoclasts and bon-vivants of his time, whom one friend called ‘a terrific grandee’, before relating his last days and his battles with ill-health, at the moment when his legend and artistic legacy had become unassailable. Stevens and Swan depict an artist who believed in chance and paradox ‒ an iconoclast who ended up becoming an icon ‒  and posit that the twentieth century cannot be understood without Bacon.

The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation contributed to this publication by placing its archives and its extensive collection of images and articles at Mark Stevens’s and Annalyn Swan’s disposal.

In English

Francis Bacon: Shadows is the fourth volume in the Francis Bacon Studies series published by The Estate of Francis Bacon in association with Thames & Hudson, with financial support from the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation. The series is edited by Martin Harrison, author of Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné. It explores little-known aspects of Bacon’s life and work and includes reproductions that have never previously been published.

Continuing in the revelatory mode established by Inside Francis Bacon, the previous volume in the series, Francis Bacon: Shadows contains six essays on diverse topics, interpretative as well as factual, which fulfil the fundamental aim of the series – to rethink Bacon’s art from new perspectives.

Beautifully presented, with previously unseen photographs and around 120 colour illustrations, this book boldly treads compelling new ground, offering startling insights into the works of one of the 20th century’s most highly-regarded artists.

Martin Harrison presents some exciting hitherto unseen photographs and includes a tribute to a major, if under-acknowledged, Bacon scholar, David Boxer (1946–2017). Christopher Bucklow studies the contrast between Bacon’s art and the art of our own times and examines Bacon in the light of Romantic Modernism’s confidence in the unconscious as a source of inspiration. Amanda Harrison’s essay ‘Bacon’s Occult Traces’ investigates the effect of occult influences through previous hidden or unrecognised evidence in the shadows of his paintings. In ‘Between Francis Bacon and the Intellect’, Croatian writer and artist Stefan Haus conducts a stimulating extended study into the impact of Bacon’s paintings on the viewer, drawing on the ideas of philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hegel. In Hugh M. Davies’ many meetings with the artist in 1973, he socialised with Bacon’s closest friends. Some of his notes were published in Francis Bacon: New Studies – Centenary Essays in 2009, but here, for the first time, Davies’ unexpurgated diary entries are published in their entirety. Passages previously considered inappropriate for publication reveal a more rounded view of Bacon as both man and artist. In her enlightening essay ‘Work on the Barry Joule Archive’, Sophie Pretorius expertly untangles the controversy that has surrounded Bacon’s supposed source material in the Barry Joule Archive. Finally, Harrison himself contributes an essay entitled ‘Lost Bacon Paintings’. Except for those which had been published while Bacon was still living, paintings that the artist destroyed were excluded from Martin Harrison’s Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné (2016). The reasoning was that Bacon had destroyed them because he considered them ‘failures’, and to circulate images of them carried the risk of misrepresenting him. Ultimately, the larger responsibility to make his oeuvre available to the public outweighed this decision and the thirteen as yet unknown, fascinating, if unresolved paintings were revealed in this volume.

In English

Inside Francis Bacon is the third volume in the Francis Bacon Studies series published by The Estate of Francis Bacon in association with Thames & Hudson, with financial support from the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation. Martin Harrison, author of Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, is the series editor.

The six essays in this volume constitute an utterly unique multi-disciplinary study of Bacon’s life and art and disclose fascinating new information about this elusive artist. Where Francis Bacon Studies I and II reflected the application of theory-based methodologies, several of the authors of Inside Francis Bacon consider the artist through biography or the technical analysis of his paintings, in line with the editor’s intention that the Francis Bacon Studies series should embrace the widest possible range of new thinking about Bacon.

Three of the essays (those by Francesca Pipe, Sophie Pretorius and Martin Harrison) are based on archives recently added to the collection of the Estate of Francis Bacon. What they reveal has revolutionised perceptions of Bacon. Very little is known about his early life and career, and the diaries of his two earliest patrons facilitate a much deeper understanding of his formative years. They debunk many of the myths that Bacon and his apologists created in the 1980s: for instance, a museum curator confidently declared that Bacon had suffered a brutal upbringing, including whippings, but evidence published in Inside Francis Bacon seriously challenges these claims. Especially revelatory are the detailed records kept over a long period by Bacon’s doctor, Paul Brass, a generous long loan to the Estate of Francis Bacon by Ruth Brass. Sophie Pretorius’s analysis of them calls for a fundamental revision of prevailing ideas about Bacon’s character and psychology and explains the uneven production rate of his paintings. Sarah Whitfield sheds significant new light on both Bonnard and Bacon, identifying concerns shared by the two artists that surprise as well as inform. Joyce H. Townsend draws on her scientific and technical investigations into Tate’s most important Bacon paintings and comparisons with the techniques of many other artists to advance enthrallingly fresh information about Bacon’s aims and techniques. Christopher Bucklow extends his meditations on the metaphor system in Bacon’s paintings published in Bacon and the Mind: Art, Neuroscience and Psychology (Francis Bacon Studies I). His essay reflects wide and perhaps unexpected terms of reference ranging from William Blake to Japanese ukiyo‑e prints.

In English

Francis Bacon: Francophile reveals iconic and in many cases previously unseen photographs of Francis Bacon in France, a country for which he had a deep affection. The book offers a fresh view of the artist through a portfolio of photographs covering the years from 1932 to 1991, accompanied by Bacon quotations on France, its culture, its artists and its intellectuals.

The photographs reproduced are from the MB Art Collection, which holds the world’s most extensive photographic archive on Francis Bacon’s life and art. At the time of publication, the Collection contained over 700 hundred photographic prints by more than 80 photographers.

Featuring more than 150 photographs of Francis Bacon in France, the book was printed in a numbered limited edition of 206 copies ‒ the number of the artist’s paintings shown in his solo exhibitions in France during his lifetime. A signed and numbered print of a photograph of Francis Bacon taken by the French photographer André Ostier on the boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris in 1982 was enclosed with each copy.

In English

Yves Peyré’s book Francis Bacon ou la mesure de l’excès was first published in French by Gallimard, with financial support from the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, to accompany the major exhibition ‘Bacon en toutes lettres’ held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris from 11 September 2019 to 20 January 2020.

Yves Peyré, a writer who was friends with Francis Bacon, has produced a remarkably comprehensive study of the artist’s life and art both in terms of analysis and as regards reproductions of paintings and drawings. He discusses the uncategorisable artist’s major contribution, from his beginnings as a designer on the eve of the 1930s to his last great triptychs from the late 1980s, offering a touching personal view of Bacon’s complex personality and extraordinary artistic output ‒ a tormented, sometimes violent body of work that reflects the artist’s inner wounds but is illuminated by his sense of colour and quest for the absolute.

Peyré’s finely-honed account indisputably offers a new approach, whose in-depth interpretations considerably broaden our view of the work. Drawing on the author’s close relationship with Francis Bacon, it takes the reader on a philosophical, poetic and artistic stroll through the various stages of an exploration that was incisive in every respect.

The original French edition received the 2020 Prix Bernier awarded by the Académie des beaux-arts for an outstanding book on art. This English translation was published by ACC Art Books in 2020.

In English

First published in French as Francis Bacon ou la Mesure de l’excès (Gallimard, 2019)

Francis Bacon: Study for a Portrait was printed in a numbered limited edition of 584 copies ‒ the number of paintings Francis Bacon produced. Each copy includes a signed and numbered print of a photograph taken by the French photographer Michel Nguyen.

This first-ever photographic monograph on Francis Bacon features more than 180 iconic images of the artist, many of them previously unseen, taken by over 60 photographers. All the photographs are from the MB Art Collection, which holds the world’s most extensive photographic archive relating to Francis Bacon’s life and art. At the time of publication, the photographic archive contained more than 700 prints of pictures taken by over 70 different photographers, from portraits by eminent photographers to rare snapshots taken by Bacon’s family and friends.

The portfolio of photographs covers the period from the 1920s to the 1990s and is accompanied by anecdotes and recollections by the photographers that shed light on the contexts in which the pictures were taken. This unique encounter with Bacon via the camera lens offers a new perspective on one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

In English

Bacon and the Mind: Art, Neuroscience and Psychology is the first volume in the Francis Bacon Studies series published by The Estate of Francis Bacon in association with Thames & Hudson, with financial support from the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation. The series aims to disseminate writing that reflects original research and offers new perspectives on Bacon’s art and life. Martin Harrison, author of Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, is the series editor.

This volume contains contributions from Christopher Bucklow, Steven Jaron, Darian Leader, John Onians, Semir Zeki and Tomohiro Ishizu.

In English

The 2017 edition of the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation’s first book (initially published in 2015) features essays, photographs and recollections by friends of Francis Bacon: the writer Yves Peyré, the artist John Pelling and the journalist Anne-Marie Crété de Chambine. Revised to take significant discoveries resulting from new research into account, it contains an expanded biography section.

Bilingual edition in French and English

Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné is a landmark publication. It presents Bacon’s entire painted oeuvre for the first time and includes many previously unpublished artworks. Its 1,538 pages contain around 800 illustrations featuring many previously unpublished artworks.

The impeccably produced five-volume, slipcased catalogue is a limited edition published by the Estate of Francis Bacon and edited by Martin Harrison with the assistance of Dr Rebecca Daniels. An ambitious, painstaking project that reflects Martin Harrison’s exacting standards and unrivalled expertise, it replaces the 1964 Alley and Rothenstein publication, hitherto the only published catalogue raisonné of Bacon’s work, which documented only 37% of his total output and contained only twenty-seven colour illustrations of his paintings.

Francis Bacon is known to have destroyed many of his paintings, and of those that have survived, only about half can be accessed in public collections. This new catalogue presents all 584 of Bacon’s surviving paintings and includes over a hundred paintings that have never previously been reproduced. It also contains drawings by Bacon, photographs of early states of paintings, images of Bacon’s furniture, handwritten notes by the artist, photographs of Bacon, his family and circle, and fascinating microscope photography of his paintings.

In English

This bilingual volume was jointly published by the Foundation and Albin Michel to accompany the exhibition ‘Francis Bacon, Monaco and French Culture’ held at the Grimaldi Forum Monaco from 2 July to 4 September 2016.

It was edited by Martin Harrison, author of Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, who curated the exhibition, and contains contributions by nine eminent art historians (Dr Darren Ambrose, Eddy Batache, Dr Rebecca Daniels, Amanda J. Harrison, Martin Harrison, Catherine Howe, Dr Carol Jacobi, Sarah Whitfield and Dr James Wishart). The preface was written by Majid Boustany, the founder and president of the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation.

Francis Bacon was a passionate Francophile. This catalogue was the first publication to invite readers to explore his close ties with France and Monaco, highlighting the influence of French culture on his life and work.

Bilingual edition in French and English

Martin Hammer is a noted specialist on Bacon, having taught, lectured, researched and written about his work. He is the author of two important scholarly books on the artist, Bacon and Sutherland (2005) and Francis Bacon and Nazi Propaganda (2012).

Hammer also curated major exhibitions including a Graham Sutherland exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2005 and ‘The Naked Portrait’ at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh in 2007. He is Professor of History and Philosophy of Art at the University of Kent.

In English

Like Bacon’s famous triptychs, the book is divided into three parts that can stand alone but are complementary. The first describes a day spent looking at Bacon’s pictures in the Prado, in close proximity with paintings by Velázquez and Goya. The second finds hidden correspondences between the figures Bacon painted at different stages of his career; the stunning portraits of George Dyer, the artist’s lover, painted before and after his suicide in 1971, provide a unifying narrative thread. The third explores the issue of truthfulness in painting via an examination of Bacon’s art in the light of icon paintings.

First published in French as Triptyque: Trois études de Francis Bacon (Atlas Books, 2011).

A series of interviews with Bacon from 1962 to 1986, first published by Thames & Hudson in 1987

As a discussion of problems of making art today, this book has been widely influential among writers and musicians as well as among artists. It has also been seen as the most revealing portrait that exists of one of the most singular artistic personalities of our time.

Bacon’s obsessive thinking about how to remake the human form in pain finds unique expression in his encounters with the distinguished art writer David Sylvester over a period of twenty-five years. In these masterfully and creatively reconstructed interviews, Sylvester provides unparalleled access to the thought, work and life of a creative genius of the 20th century.

In English

Following a career as a lawyer specialising in intellectual property, during which he dealt with numerous cases involving major artists, Bruno Sabatier, formerly an art publisher and now a gallery owner, has focused almost exclusively on the work of Francis Bacon, whom he met for the first time in 1976.

Bilingual edition in French and English

Throughout his career, Francis Bacon made many anti-religious and, more specifically, anti-Christian statements. He was a militant atheist who did not merely dismiss religion and religious faith, but used symbols of Christianity, especially the Crucifixion and the Pope, to show that it was untenable in the modern era. Rina Arya seeks to account for Bacon’s recurrent, sustained use of religious symbols, demonstrating how the artist redeployed religious iconography to convey the experience of the human condition, specifically animalism and mortality. By setting the work in the context of post-war philosophical preoccupations with the death of God, she offers a robust framework within which to view and interpret Bacon’s complex images. This original approach casts new light on the work of one of the leading artists of the 20th century.

In English