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Tuesday, April 28, 2015
FRANCIS BACON AND THE MASTERS
18 April – 26 July 2015 Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
Francis Bacon and the Masters is a ground-breaking exhibition in which Bacon’s obsession with the art of the past will be brought into full focus. A major body of works by the artist will be juxtaposed with masterpieces by some of the greatest painters and sculptors in the history of art, in a spectacular exploration of Bacon’s working methods and ideas.
Video and lots of images!
The exhibition will include works by Rembrandt, Velazquez, Rodin, Michelangelo, Picasso, Bernini, Cezanne, Titian, Matisse and Van Gogh as well as superb examples of antique Greek, Roman and Egyptian sculpture from the State Hermitage Museum. Many of these works have not travelled to the UK before. The exhibition comes to Norwich following its internationally acclaimed opening at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, where it marked the culmination of the celebrations forthe 250thanniversary of the Hermitageand concluded the UK/Russia Year of Culture.
The founders of the Centre, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury were important early patrons of Francis Bacon. They purchased their first Bacon painting, Study for a Nude, in 1953, and went on to commission their portraits from him.The thirteen Bacon paintings in the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection willform the core group of works in the exhibition but they will be joined byimportant loans drawn from public and private collections across Britain and Ireland. In all, more than 3o works by the artistwill be shown. The exhibition will include documentary and archive material, including photographs of Bacon’s studio, palettes, books, catalogues and materials owned by the artistand loaned by Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane. Bacon’s preoccupation with the art of the past is vividly revealed in the material drawn from his studio.The exhibition has been created by a team comprised of guest curator Dr Thierry Morel,curator ofthe Houghton Revisited exhibition in 2014, Lisa Renne from the State Hermitage Museum;and from the Sainsbury Centre, Chief Curator, Amanda Geitner and Calvin Winner, Head of Collections.
Head of a Man, 1960, by Francis Bacon. Photograph: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS 2015
Crucifixion, by Francis Bacon, 1933, with The Crucifixion, by Alonso Cano, 1601. Photograph: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS 2015 / The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg 2014
Devastating review from The Guardian:
Francis Bacon and the Masters is a ground-breaking exhibition in which Bacon’s obsession with the art of the past will be brought into full focus. A major body of works by the artist will be juxtaposed with masterpieces by some of the greatest painters and sculptors in the history of art, in a spectacular exploration of Bacon’s working methods and ideas.
Video and lots of images!
The exhibition will include works by Rembrandt, Velazquez, Rodin, Michelangelo, Picasso, Bernini, Cezanne, Titian, Matisse and Van Gogh as well as superb examples of antique Greek, Roman and Egyptian sculpture from the State Hermitage Museum. Many of these works have not travelled to the UK before. The exhibition comes to Norwich following its internationally acclaimed opening at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, where it marked the culmination of the celebrations forthe 250thanniversary of the Hermitageand concluded the UK/Russia Year of Culture.
The founders of the Centre, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury were important early patrons of Francis Bacon. They purchased their first Bacon painting, Study for a Nude, in 1953, and went on to commission their portraits from him.The thirteen Bacon paintings in the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection willform the core group of works in the exhibition but they will be joined byimportant loans drawn from public and private collections across Britain and Ireland. In all, more than 3o works by the artistwill be shown. The exhibition will include documentary and archive material, including photographs of Bacon’s studio, palettes, books, catalogues and materials owned by the artistand loaned by Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane. Bacon’s preoccupation with the art of the past is vividly revealed in the material drawn from his studio.The exhibition has been created by a team comprised of guest curator Dr Thierry Morel,curator ofthe Houghton Revisited exhibition in 2014, Lisa Renne from the State Hermitage Museum;and from the Sainsbury Centre, Chief Curator, Amanda Geitner and Calvin Winner, Head of Collections.
Head of a Man, 1960, by Francis Bacon. Photograph: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS 2015
Crucifixion, by Francis Bacon, 1933, with The Crucifixion, by Alonso Cano, 1601. Photograph: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS 2015 / The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg 2014
Devastating review from The Guardian:
Francis Bacon was the divine devil of modern British art, a demon of dark ecstasy. His pummelling of human flesh has a monstrous sensuality, a massive power. Usually, seeing a Bacon, I drink in its perverse colours like blood or wine. At least, I used to. After this exhibition, I don’t know if I can ever take Francis Bacon seriously again.
What a shame. All his life, Bacon looked at and wanted to reinvent the art of the great masters. This show opens with giant photographs of his mad nest of a studio, its paint-stained floor littered with reproductions of works by the art heroes he longed to rival. His paintings of imprisoned popes were inspired by Velázquez’s portrait of Innocent X; his contortions of the human body by Michelangelo’s turbulent statues. It surely makes sense to set Bacon’s paintings side by side with works by the masters he loved.
Yet Bacon and the Masters is a massacre, a cruel exposure, a debacle. Bacon’s paintings are mocked, his talents dwarfed. The jaw-dropping masterpieces by the likes of Picasso, Titian and Rodin that so nearly make this show five-star unmissable also, to my dismay, to my shock, make Bacon seem a small, timebound, fading figure.
JACOB LAWRENCE at Auction
Biography
The paintings of Jacob Lawrence express his lifelong concern for human dignity, freedom, and his own social consciousness. His images portray the everyday reality, the struggles and successes of African American life. Using art as an instrument of protest, Lawrence aligned himself with the American school of social realism and Mexican muralist tradition.Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Lawrence grew up in Harlem during the Depression. Harlem was an active cultural center then, and Lawrence became interested in the arts while still a teenager. He received early training at art workshops sponsored by the federal government's Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Harlem and then studied at the American Artists School in New York. From 1938 to 1939, Lawrence worked in the Federal Arts Project and produced some of his earliest major works. His first important solo exhibition in 1944, at New York's Museum of Modern Art, secured his place as an important commentator on the American scene, particularly African American experiences. Lawrence died on 9 June 2000.
Lawrence's subject matter and painting style remained relatively consistent through his career. His subjects range from street scenes to the lives of important African Americans to powerful narrative series--chronicles of the afflictions endured by African Americans. He portrays these diverse subjects in a quasi-representational style that combines vivid, often discordant tempera colors with a flattened, fragmented treatment of form and space. The artist's intent is to convey his feelings about the subjects portrayed. As Lawrence said, "My pictures express my life and experience. I paint the things I know about and the things I have experienced."
Sotheby's 2014
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RALLY
MOHAWKS! BRING OUT YOUR AXES, AND tell King George we'll pay no taxes on his foreign tea... -- A SONG OF 1773
Christie’s 2007
Pr.$114,000
Christie’s 2006
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National Gallery of Art
Christie’s 2006
Christie’s 2000
National Gallery of Art
- Lawrence, Jacob
- , American, 1917 - 2000
- Daybreak - A Time to Rest
- 1967
- tempera on hardboard
- overall: 76.2 x 61 cm (30 x 24 in.)
- framed: 92.4 x 76.8 cm (36 3/8 x 30 1/4 in.)
- Anonymous Gift
- 1973.8.1
- Lawrence, Jacob
- , American, 1917 - 2000
- Street to Mbari
- 1964
- tempera over graphite on wove paper
- overall: 56.5 x 78.4 cm (22 1/4 x 30 7/8 in.)
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James T. Dyke
- 1993.18.1
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