BACON AND THE MASTERS AT THE SAINSBURY CENTRE FOR THE VISUAL ARTS

Bacon and the Masters: a searing preview by Jonathan Jones of the exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts starting 18 April

This is a brief summary of the article by Jonathan Jones which previews the exhibition starting on 18 April at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.

Bacon and the Masters

Jones’ article is entitled: ‘Cruel exposure of Bacon is shocking and devastating’. 

Jones describes Bacon as ‘the divine devil of modern British art’.  He refers to the ‘monstrous sensuality’ and ‘massive power’ of Bacon’s ‘pummelling of human flesh’. 

Jones writes, after the exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts: ‘I don’t know if I can ever take Francis Bacon seriously again’.

Jones describes Bacon’s life work as having been an attempt to ‘reinvent the work of the great Masters’.  Velazquez and Michelangelo in particular inspired Bacon’s portraits.  But the juxtaposition of Bacon’s works with works by some of the Masters ‘is a massacre, a cruel exposure, a debacle’.   

The show is unmissable because of the number of great works on display, but the effect on Bacon is that he is shown to be both an ‘aesthetic failure’ and a ‘moral failure’.

Bacon’s works are described as ‘melodramatic’ and ‘painfully contrived’.  The Masters’ works are compassionate and humane but Bacon’s are ‘weightless’, ‘insincere’, and ‘morbid’.  The exhibition shows that Bacon ‘tries too hard to be different’.  In contrast, the Masters’ works are ‘relaxed and honest’.

Masters, whose works are mentioned as being in the show include: Matisse, Bernini, Rodin, Titian, Picasso.  Many of these works are from the Hermitage in St.Petersburg, and have  been loaned in exchange for a previous loan by the Sainsbury family of their Bacons to the Hermitage.