Bacon
Subtitle: portraits and self-portraits
By: introduction by Milan Kundera ; [essay by] France Borel ; [translated from the French by Ruth Taylor and Linda Asher].
Contributors: Borel, France.
Publisher: Thames and Hudson
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 215
Subjects: Bacon, Francis, 1909-  -- Self-portraits -- Catalogs; Portraits -- Catalogs; Figurative expressionism -- England -- Catalogs
Description: Francis Bacon's tormented self-images, his brutal portrayals of friends and fellow artists, and his deformations and stylistic distortions of classicism have broken the mould of portraiture; no other painter of the twentieth century has so drastically overturned the genre. Bacon: Portraits and Self-Portraits, published in association with the Estate of Francis Bacon, is the first book to be dedicated to this aspect of his work.

With superb reproductions of more than 130 studies and portraits, including those of Lucian Freud, George Dyer, John Edwards, Isabel Rawsthorne, Mick Jagger, Muriel Belcher and Henrietta Moraes, Bacon: Portraits and Self-Portraits offers new insight into these radical and disturbing images. Many details are included, revealing for the first time the varied textures of Bacon's paint surface.

Milan Kundera, the famed Czech novelist, provides a perceptive introduction, explaining his response to Bacon's works, while France Borel sets them in the context of his life and influences, and explains his pioneering approach to portraiture.
Notes: Includes filmography (p. 210) and bibliographical references (p. 211).