Evocation by Francis Bacon

“Well, again, I don’t think one really knows whether it’s a run of luck or whether it’s instinct working in your favour or whether it’s instinct and consciousness and everything intermingling and working in your favour.” – Francis Bacon

I keep Mark Rothko close enough while Klimt drapes above me.  I can see clearly Manet’s dark impressionist portraits staring back at me.  And I chuckle often at Dali’s Blonde installation in Figueres as his hyper realism paintings draw me into his 3-D world. But I never once chanced upon an artist with the last name that carries many succulent and luscious of porcine tastes – at least in places like mine where a good slice remains in scarcity.

On a shelf in the bathroom, rests a landscape postcard of Bacon’s tribute to his lover, George Dyer from the Prado Museum in Madrid.  A gift from Madrid from F which I honestly admit did not lay much thought and look into.  However the daily glimpse somewhat becomes evocative and thus now, I am sold.

Trio in memory of George Dyer

Damien Hirst said, “When I read David Sylvester’s interviews with Francis Bacon they changed my life.”  That sentence alone churns me from within inside to throw aside preparations for this weekend’s postnatal anatomy lecture I’m giving, to stay up until dawn when the sun greets me and to plunge into the world inhabited by Francis Bacon.  I had just read the interview and am intrigued by his utter frankness about himself, the world and its reality in such matter-of-factness.  Absolute evocation.

Now, let me attempt to fall into slumber and pretend to greet tomorrow as though I never heard of this menacing Irish master.