Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An exploration of the interplay between photography and painting in the work of Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon famously found inspiration in photographs, film stills, and mass-media imagery. This book draws on a broad range of source images and documents, many hitherto unknown, to reveal how these media informed some of Bacon's most important paintings and helped to trigger significant turning points in his stylistic development. Martin Harrison locates Bacon's work in a tradition of artists making use of mechanical reproductions, including Picasso and Walter Sickert. Harrison also reviews Bacon's painting in the context of key influences: film directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge and John Deakin, and masters such as Velazquez, Poussin, and Rodin. In addition, Bacon's work is considered in the context of his contemporaries, including Lucian Freud, Mark Rothko, Graham Sutherland, and Patrick Heron. Analysis of elements of Bacon's biography and psychology leads to some startling and original insights into the man and the unique iconography of his art. With the aid of over 260 superb illustrations and the advantage of privileged access to unpublished material from the artist's archives, this is a book that addresses important questions about Bacon's practice and that, in reassessing key paintings, sheds new light on his life and work. 265 illustrations in color and duotone.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Scholarship on the English painter Francis Bacon (1909-92) has mushroomed since his death, with 80-plus titles published in the past decade (see, for instance, Martin Hammer's Bacon and Sutherland, reviewed on this page). Harrison, who has published widely on British photography, provides an essential addition to our understanding of Bacon's art. This strikingly produced and limpidly written work surveys the artist's use of printed and photographic images to create some of the most emotional paintings of the last century. With substantial consideration of his personal life and with access to the extensive archives of his personal and studio materials, Harrison has focused on the artist's use of reproduced images (printed, and later photographic) to shape his depictions. A wonderfully observant chapter considers the impact of Bacon's various studios and the other physical spaces he knew and occupied on the geometry and atmosphere of his paintings. Although supported by the Francis Bacon Foundation, this is independent, original research, with high-level writing and observation. Strongly recommended for all art collections.-Jack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Bacon (1909-92) was internationally known as an "outstanding postwar artist." He painted some of the most "compellingly raw paintings" of the century. His most common subject was individuals, their anguish and relationships. Art historians have written that, during the latter part of his life, Bacon used photographs as a source of his images; now, Harrison, accessing unpublished materials in the Bacon archives, has reproduced in this book "working documents" of photographs; newspaper articles; illustrations from medical, sports, and art books; and pictures from film clips used by Bacon. Color reproductions of these are shown alongside Bacon's paintings. Bacon's unorthodox techniques and minimal art education, along with his own claim that he did not use preliminary drawings, are explored. Harrison's commentary elucidates themes in his work and biographical information about Bacon. Particularly valuable for its analysis of Bacon's techniques, it can be used with three other relatively new books on Bacon: Michael Peppiatt's Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (CH, Dec'97, 35-1932); Andrew Sinclair's Francis Bacon: His Life and Violent Times (1993); and Daniel Farson's The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (1993). Harrison regards John Russell's earlier Francis Bacon (1985) as the standard biography of Bacon. For comprehensive art collections. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. N. M. Lambert University of South Carolina Upstate

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Martin Harrison is widely regarded as the leading authority on the art of fashion photography. His previous books include Appearances: Fashion Photography Since 1945 (1991), David Bailey: Birth of the Cool (1999), Lillian Bassman (1997), Patrick Demarchalier: Exposing elegance (1998), and numerous others. Harrison works and resides in London.

(Bowker Author Biography)