Ugly, obscene and terrifying - the grotesque figures in Francis Bacon's paintings disturbingly evoke the claustrophobia and voyeurism of Big Brother, writes Gordon Burn
Saturday July 1, 2006
"His subject matter is still man in the horror of his isolation - naked and obscene on a studio couch, or grinning baboon-like from behind a desk ... But after the initial shock, one begins to feel on almost friendly terms with the creatures in his zoo. It may be an ugly, obscene and terrifying world, but it is also a deeply human one."
It is hard to read the American poet John Ashbery's review of Francis Bacon's 1963 Tate retrospective today without thinking of the menagerie being fed and watered in the forensically over-illuminated, bread-and-circuses Big Brother house. Conversely, it is impossible to watch Lea, the sex-hungry, cartoonishly enhanced single mum from the Midlands; Pete, who has Tourette's syndrome and is forever rabbit-punching himself in the throat, involuntarily ejaculating the word "******"; or Nikki, the prating Essex diva - and not be reminded of the grotesques in a typical Bacon painting, their faces bloated with laughter or twisted into a scream.
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The Guardian
