David Sylvester's "Looking back at Francis Bacon"
In this book Sylvester reviews Bacon's painting more or less chronologically, but also organizes his discussion into themes: a late starter, a trail of the human presence, a state of unease, all the pulsations of a person, images in series, an escape from emotion, a picture but not a picture. Many sharp insights into the paintings, generously reproduced in the book. One I liked especially is that Bacon's heads are inspired by Picasso, his bodies by Matisse. Bacon preferred Picasso to Matisse because the former exhibits "the brutality of fact." After "Review," the section "Reflections" meditates, in short prose pieces, on different aspects of Bacon's art, such as "The painter as medium," "Bacon and poetry," "Bacon and Giocometti," "Bacon's secret vice," and "Images of the human body." The third section "Fragments of Talk" gathers together snippets of interviews and conversations Syl...