I'm curious about the backstory to Francis Bacon's Mick triptych. Is this documented anywhere?

Apparently it was auctioned by its owner in Florida in the early '90s.

Though I adore Bacon's work, I can't say I'm wild about these portraits. It looks hasty like a commission but I can't imagine by whom. Considering what disfigurations Bacon's subjects underwent, Mick was treated kindly.

[www.francis-bacon.com]

The title says "Three Studies for a Portrait (Mick Jagger)" so it seems these are only "sketches", and a final portrait was either planned or actually exists...maybe owned by Jagger himself?


A quote from an article from the South Florida Sun Sentinal in 1992 also describes them as "only studies":

"While the ensemble at Lipworth comprises only studies, it carries a premium price tag".

Three Studies for a Portrait (Mick Jagger), 1982

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2019-09-19 05:37 by Hairball.

Read heaps on Bacon … but the Jagger
portraits usually only get a passing mention

Interestingly though Mick grew up in
the same Dartford neighbourhood as Peter Blake ….. and
occasionally you'll see Mick citing Blake as one of his favourite artist



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Bacon titled innumerable paintings "studies," including a few of his masterpieces. Perhaps a way to avoid criticism.

He worked almost exclusively from photographs, so I wonder what he was working from and why.

Making Ronnie's Mick sketches look like da Vinci's

I remember Marlon Richards in some interview
way back citing Francis Bacon as his favourite artist …..



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[www.sun-sentinel.com]#



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Quote
cyclist
I'm curious about the backstory to Francis Bacon's Mick triptych. Is this documented anywhere?

Apparently it was auctioned by its owner in Florida in the early '90s.

Though I adore Bacon's work, I can't say I'm wild about these portraits. It looks hasty like a commission but I can't imagine by whom. Considering what disfigurations Bacon's subjects underwent, Mick was treated kindly.

[www.francis-bacon.com]

Commissioned by Mick, perhaps?
(Would have been a good investment,if so)

Fyi there's a huge Bacon exhibition that just started in Paris at the Beaubourg center...

It may be Bacon, it's still horrible. But it's all in the name. So, I guess they are valuable.

The triptych was typical in the Renaissance and Medieval painting and the Three Studies could be the final Artwork.
I like his Art

no relation to Kevin Bacon or Oscar Meyer Bacon

His "Three studies of Lucian Freud" went for $142,4 million in 2013:

Quote
Stoneage
It may be Bacon, it's still horrible. But it's all in the name.

Nah you mistake Bacon (a true artist) for crooks like Jeff Koons... or Frank Gehry.

No, I'm not mistaking. I really don't think the three Jagger portraits are any good. In fact I think they are hauntingly ugly. But maybe that was the point?
But what I think doesn't matter. Bacon sells on his name anyway. That's how it works.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2019-09-19 20:11 by Stoneage.

To appreciate his paintings (which doesn't mean you have to like them), reading his theories might be helpful.

From the SunSentinal article:

The Jagger portraits also reflect the highly individual idiom of Bacon's best efforts -- namely,
rendering the repulsiveness of the human form in an ambiguous way.

As Bacon once wrote:

"Art is a method of opening up areas of feeling rather than merely an illustration of an object.
I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail,
leaving a trail of the human presence and a memory trace of past events, as the snail leaves its slime."

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Figure With Meat, 1954
51" x 48" inches
Bacon

The figure is based on the Pope Innocent X portrait by Diego Velázquez; however,
in the Bacon painting the Pope is shown as a gruesome figure and placed between two bisected halves of a cow.
The carcass hanging in the background is likely derived from Rembrandt's Slaughtered Ox, 1655.
The painting is in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.




According to Mary Louise Schumacher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Bacon appropriated the famous portrait, with its subject, enthroned and draped in satins and lace, his stare stern and full of authority. In Bacon's version, animal carcasses hang at the pope's back, creating a raw and disturbing Crucifixion-like composition. The pope's hands, elegant and poised in Velázquez's version, are rough hewn and gripping the church's seat of authority in apparent terror. His mouth is held in a scream and black striations drip down from the pope's nose to his neck. It's as if Bacon picked up a wide house painting brush and brutishly dragged it over the face. The fresh meat recalls the lavish arrangements of fruits, meats and confections in 17th-century vanitas paintings, which usually carried subtle moralizing messages about the impermanence of life and the spiritual dangers of sensual pleasures. Sometimes, the food itself showed signs of being overripe or spoiled, to make the point. Bacon weds the imagery of salvation, worldly decadence, power and carnal sensuality, and he contrasts those things with his own far more palpable and existential view of damnation".[1]

The painting is featured in Tim Burton's 1989 film Batman, in a scene where the Joker and his henchmen destroy several works of art at the Gotham City Museum. However, the Joker spares Figure with Meat, saying, "I kind of like this one, Bob. Leave it."

In contrast:

Diego Valesquez
Portrait of Innocent X
c.1650
59" x 47" inches



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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

ugly and beautiful are long gone objective attributes in the art world, ever since the early 20th century at least. so it is just not the name of the artist that sells no matter what. though sometimes it happens, just like in music, theater, cinema.
by mid nineteenth century's notion of beauty I believe rock and roll would have sound as the ugliest thing in the world ever I think

on bacon's art see Hairball post above

I recognize Bacon as an artist. That is not the point. I don't think the Jagger portraits are any good though. You don't have to like everything an artist did. I don't think Bacon did either.

"You don't have to like everything an artist did".

Exactly, just like you don't have to like everything a rock band did - the Stones being a prime example.

EDIT: I don't like these Jagger portraits much either as they seem unfinished and/or tame in comparison w/his best work imo.
Might have been better if given the full Bacon treatment... "like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and a memory trace of past events, as the snail leaves its slime"

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2019-09-19 20:35 by Hairball.

Quote
Stoneage
I recognize Bacon as an artist. That is not the point. I don't think the Jagger portraits are any good though. You don't have to like everything an artist did. I don't think Bacon did either.

Agree 100%, my point is on using ugly as it was the same as saying I dont like. it is not, at least it is not anymore. If ugly still means "unpleasant or repulsive, especially in appearance" there have been many artists in the past two centuries that have create masterpieces working on that concept. but of course no one has to like it just because an "artist" did it. or like everything of that particular artist. I adore Picasso's figurative work for example and can't stand cubism.

Of course, Maumau. I'm familiar with his abstract art.He has a unique style.

Quote
MisterDDDD
Making Ronnie's Mick sketches look like da Vinci's

Fully agree.

While I can't help myself: The Bacon sketches are just horrible.

d.f

real deal ...

  

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2019-09-20 19:31 by schillid.

From Christie's page dedicated to the tryptich of his self portraits I steal the words from a "bacon's specialist" Lucia Tro Santafé which I think are telling also about this studio of mick's head

"Triptych

He almost always uses this triptych form in his portraits. He likes to give three versions of a face because we have three parts of our face — the front view, where you fully see both eyes, and then the left and right sides. And people look different from those three angles. He liked to say that that’s why when you’re arrested they take photos of your three sides. There’s always this feeling of movement between the three of images of his triptychs. The practice also looks back in art history to the Middle Ages tradition of depicting religious scenes in three parts — in line with the tripartite iconography of the crucifixion and the Holy Trinity.

The mouth (what you don’t see)

He did a lot of portraits with the mouth open. He saw Sergei Eisenstein’s film, Battleship Potemkin, and in the film there’s a scene of a nurse screaming. He started using the scream with his Pope Innocent paintings because he wanted to give some expression to an unknown, to an abstract face. During that period he also bought himself a book of mouth diseases, in Paris, and he just loved it. But he doesn’t depict himself screaming or with a diseased mouth; he does that more with his anonymous figures."

The emphasis of Bacon on the open mouth as a symbol may be was something that drew his interest toward Mick as a subject for portrait

Just speculating

But I did not know these, and they are growing on me so thanks cyclist for this thread

A great recent documentary (with a slightly smug appearance by Miss Faithful)

and

A hilarious interview from the early sixties. Bacon getting fried toward the end.

Yes, I can see Bacon finding Mick's mouth appealing!

Here's Bacon critiquing several works of art with brutal honesty. He saves his harshest criticism for himself: [youtu.be]

The whole documentary is engrossing, especially as Bacon gets increasingly blotto throughout the day. Talk about lust for life!

.....MOVES

LIKE

JAGGER................................

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2019-09-21 05:44 by schillid.

Groovy Bob
The Life and Times of Robert Fraser --- Harriet Vyner



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