1 Barbara Dawson, director of the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, remembers very clearly the day in 1997 when she climbed the steep stairs and entered Francis Bacon’s studio at 4 7 Reece Mews, South Kensington. It had been left the way it was when he passed away, on April 28 1992, and it was a chaos of slashed canvases, paint-splashed walls, cloths, 7 brushes, champagne boxes, and a large mirror. She stood and stared for a long time, in a kind of incredulity, “and actually it became quite beautiful.” She began to see “paths cut through 10 it,” and details. “The last unfinished painting was on the easel when I went in there, and on the floor underneath the easel was a short article on George Michael, the singer, about how he 13 liked to be photographed from one side. It was like looking into somebody’s mind”.
7 Reece Mews was tiny, and apart from the studio 16 consisted of two rooms — a kitchen that contained a bath, and a living room that doubled as a bedroom. The studio had one skylight, and Bacon usually worked there in the mornings. He 19 tried to paint elsewhere — in South Africa, for example, when he was visiting family, but couldn’t. (Too much light, was the rather surprising objection.) He liked the size and general 22 frugality, too.
Dawson recognised that the studio was the making of Bacon’s art in a more profound sense than just being a 25 comfortable space to paint in, and determined that it should not be dismantled. John Edwards, to whom Bacon had bequeathed Reece Mews, felt similarly, and after months of painstaking 28 cataloguing by archaeologists, conservators and photographers, the Hugh Lane Gallery took delivery of the studio, in 1998. It was opened to the public in 2001.
31 What is visible now, in a climate-controlled corner of the gallery, a gracious neo-classical building on Parnell Square in Dublin, is in fact a kind of faithful “skin” of objects; the 34 tables and chairs have all been returned to their original places, the work surfaces seem as cluttered as they were — but the deep stuff, the bedrock, has been removed and is kept in 37 climate-controlled archival areas. In the end, there were 7,500 items — samples of painting materials, photographs, slashed canvasses, umpteen handwritten notes, drawings, books, 40 champagne boxes.
Bacon was homosexual at a time when it was still illegal, and while he was open about his sexuality, his notes for 43 prospective paintings refer to “bed[s] of crime]”, and his homosexuality was felt as an affliction, says Dawson. It wasn’t easy. The sense of guilt is apparent in his work, as well as his 46 fascination with violence. “His collections of pictures, dead bodies, or depictions of violence — he’s not looking at violence from the classic liberal position”. It was all, concedes 49 Dawson, accompanied by intellectual rigour, and an insistent attempt at objectivity — “he’s trying to detach from himself as well.”
52 Everything was grist, and in his studio even his own art fed other art. He returned to his own work obsessively, repeating and augmenting. And of course, he responded 55 negatively — and violently — as well as positively; a hundred is a lot of slashed canvasses to keep around you when you’re working, especially when they are so deliberately slashed. In 58 a way, all this might serve as a metaphor for the importance of our understanding of his studio as a whole.
Aida Edemarian. Francis Bacon: box of tricks.
Internet: <www.theguardian.com> (adapted).
Decide whether the statements below are right (C) or wrong (E) according to the ideas and facts mentioned in the text.
The two driving forces behind the Hugh Lane Gallery project were Dawson and Edwards.