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“Feeling his way”: Francis Bacon’s modernist furniture

Jan 13th, 2015
Rug c.1929 by Francis Bacon 1909-1992

//Rug c.1929 by Francis Bacon. 212 x 126 x 1.5cm. Private collection currently on loan to Tate Britain. © The Estate Of Francis Bacon//

bacon - stool

//Stool, c. 1930. Painted and laminated wood 40.5 x 51.5 x 38cm. This appeared on Antiques Roadshow in 2013 – the owner explained that her  grandparents bought it from Bacon after he was featured in The Studio magazine//

index copy

//Invitation to 1929 selling exhibition, from Richard Shone’s article on Bacon the furniture designer in The Burlington magazine, 1996//

I’m fascinated by the modernist furniture and interiors produced by Francis Bacon before his emergence as “Bacon Agonistes”, in critic John Richardson’s memorable phrase.

This occurred in 1933 with the selection of Bacon’s painting Crucifixion by Herbert Read for his 1933 survey Art Now: An Introduction To The Theory Of Modern Painting And Sculpture; tellingly, the work by the 24-year-old was juxtaposed in the layout with Picasso’s 1929 Female Bather With Raised Arms. Picasso was the only 20th century artist who “fully captivated Bacon”, wrote his biographer Michael Peppiatt, while the artist said he decided to abandon furniture and interiors when he saw an exhibition of Picasso’s Dinard paintings at Paul Rosenberg’s Paris gallery in the late 20s.

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The master tailor’s tale: Il Sarto di Picasso

Jun 2nd, 2013

In her review this weekend of TJ Clark’s new book Picasso And Truth: From Cubism To Guernica, Financial Times art critic Jackie Wullschlager writes about how meaninglessness replaced absolute truth in the 20th century epoch of terror and totalitarianism, and that “in our age of performance and body art, Clark brilliantly posits a Picasso who replaced a truth project with a performance project, playing, dazzling, persuading.”

//Picasso sketches a priapic portrait of Michele Sapone at his villa La Californie, Cannes, 1957. Photo: DD Duncan//

//Pastels given to Sapone by Picasso, including the portrait made on April 1, 1957//

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