FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM [465]

(2016)

I know the room in which I write these articles is messy, but at least I can still see the floor. For me, the archetypal definition of a messy room was the one I caught a plane to see. 

Francis Bacon was the Dublin-born British painter of visceral, violent intensity and twisted limbs, often in series of diptychs and triptychs, which remain unsettling and captivating. For me, the knowledge they were created in a studio setting of chaos and debris could not be separated from the finished works. Pictures of Bacon in his studio show him amongst various piles of paint pots and boxes, ripped-up books and newspapers lining the floor, paint mixed into the door and walls, but oddly nothing that could be mistaken as trash.

I am sure Bacon would have approved of my itinerary on 1st March 2016: the Guinness factory; St Patrick’s Cathedral, the Anglican cathedral where Jonathan Swift was once Dean; Trinity College library and the Book of Kells; and the Hugh Lane Gallery in Parnell Square, where Bacon’s studio was reconstructed and opened for public view in 2001. 

Virtually untouched since Bacon’s death in 1992, the studio was bought in its entirety by the gallery in 1998, shipping its entire contents from London, from the walls, windows and doors to even the remaining dust, with around seven thousand individual items digitised and recorded before being slotted back, like a jigsaw puzzle, into its original strewn form. You can look through the windows, then review the database on screens surrounded by the last six canvasses that remained unfinished after Bacon died.

(2016)

During the week I was in Dublin, I visited the studio twice, and overwhelmed both times. Framed by its windows, I could only take in the tableau as a whole – I never thought to look through the database, because I had no idea where to start. Only now looking back through the pictures I took through the window, using an iPhone 6 with a good-for-the-time 8-megapixel camera, I was immediately drawn to the numerous tins of white Dulux Trade Vinyl Matt Emulsion paint – it was mentioned that Bacon used acrylic paint in addition to oils, and these appeared to be it. I tried to find what use it would have in an artistic context, but I was being pointed back to its suitability for “low traffic rooms” like hallways.

Boxes that previously contained VAT 69, a blended scotch whisky, and Krug champagne litter the floor, but like the door and walls, may have been used to blend colours. I read later that pairs of corduroy trousers were also kept in the room, which I couldn’t quite see, that had paint applied to them and used to add texture. Bottle caps are as often used to apply paint to canvas as much as the numerous paintbrushes. Reference books, prints and photographs are scattered – I can only assume that Bacon’s filing system was just knowing where everything this, but seeing a book on Velázquez being near the surface was appropriate, his portrait of Pope Innocent X informing many Bacon studies and portraits.

I am not sure about needing to retain the many cans of varnish and fixative, but in looking at the positioning of the main H-frame easel in the room, with a skylight looking down on it, and in front of a window, Bacon had his back to most of the room, with everything having the potential to be some sort of a tool at any point. That can be the only reason there was no need to clean up the room: everything was where it needed to be.

(2016)