Bringing Home the Bacon

Now I'm going to get into an area that is definitely not my strong suit -- but if I don't say it, who will? The area is art criticism, and the subject is the work of Francis Bacon, one of the contemporary (if dead) artists whose work has gone totally astronomical in price over the past few years. Bacons' work has, at least, the merit of being distinctive and unmistakable -- you can spot it a mile off. Every example I've seen is in the "portrait" category, if we can stretch that term a bit, and the portraits, including when they are of real people, are invariably distorted and knotted up. They seem to represent what might happen to people who suffer from severe and disfiguring injuries and wounds, to the body but most especially to the face. They seem at times to be in the throes of agony -- either physical or emotional. There are pieces missing, and pieces added, as if a Frankenstein wannabe who got thrown out of medical school had had his way with a corpse. This, in sum, is the body (so to speak) of Bacon's work, and while "there is no accounting for taste" the question remains why his paintings are selling for more than Palm Beach mansions.

Ayn Rand -- novelist, philosopher, and founder of the Objectivist movement -- described art as a two-faceted phenomenon. The "metaphysics" of a piece is represented by the subject matter -- i.e. what the artist thinks is important, or "real", or worth dealing with. The "epistemology" of a piece is represented by the style -- the rendition, if you will, the "how" as opposed to the metaphysical "what". Now, in Bacon's case the "what" is people and he certainly cannot be accused of not being representational in the broad sense. The "how", on the other hand, involves the distortions and disfigurements mentioned above, and then the question becomes, why did he choose to represent people this way? What does it say about his view of those specific people, or of humanity in general, or of himself? And I'm sure there are answers to these questions, but there is another set of questions, and these have to do with people who view, patronize, and buy works of art. It may be pure speculation at this point, in Bacon's case, but it has to start somewhere, i.e. at some point someone has to pronounce this art "good", and worth viewing and collecting. And that gets us into the question of, not only what does the art mean to the artist, but what does it mean to the viewer -- and these are not necessarily the same thing at all. A work of art might be considered "interesting" or "cool", or some other superficial thing, when in fact it represents the deepest probing of the artist into his own soul. So many artists, in fact, come to despise their "patrons", who (they feel) appreciate their work for all the wrong reasons. But it does bring home the, um, bacon, so most will put up with it. Nonetheless, I can't imagine that Bacon's work appeals to collectors only based on being interesting or "cool". It is certainly not attractive work, by any conventional standard. So what is it? Is it an image of what so many see as their own existence, or as the existence of others, or society in general? Is is like so much of the artistic product of the Weimar Republic, which was overly-mannered (we would say "ironic"), self-conscious, self-pitying, and degenerate (even Hitler agreed with that last assessment)? And -- always the question -- does the fact that so many people like, and are willing to pay such enormous sums for, "pathological" art reflect a deep and growing pathology in society? Surely they aren't all just playing games and being stylish! Why Bacon, and a few of his equally-bizarre contemporaries, and not others? Why not the "healthy" ones? (And no, I do not have a collection of Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post covers -- my tendency is toward Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield.)

I'm only asking questions at this point, not providing answers. But the next time you see a Bacon going for over $50 million you might want to consider some of the points I've raised.