C: “You are rumoured to be the artistic heir of Francis  Bacon, (and author of your School of Francis Bacon, the world's foremost web page on the painter) didn't hesitate when you met the artist  to blame with him (in passim a very coureageous act) what you call the sad involution of his last style, from a painter that so mearvellous and so powerfully reinvented the antigurativity to the inane, illustrative, pallid paints of the last years. I agreed for a long time with that statement. But now I wonder: couldn't be his despairing effort to not repeat himself? In short: his art turn from deformative to subtractive (with wonderful red amaranthine like in the 1987 Study of the Human  Body .) Probabily less powerful, but different. ( from his fifty.)”

A: “But Bacon did repeat himself as with the second version (1988) of the 1944 triptych – but the later version is clinical, lacklustre and lifeless. Bacon became bored with painting by 1980 and was not interested in the play of paint or the game of chance. Bacon simply lost the ability to manipulate paint; I would have destroyed all his paintings after 1980. Faggionato Fine Art own some of the late bloodless and lustless lacklustre paintings that are all absolutely awful and should have been destroyed by Bacon: just check out their glossy catalogue Francis Bacon: Paintings from the Estate: 1980-1991 and you will see for yourself that they are all watered down and weak works – not even the ghost of Bacon is present! Bacon really stopped painting in about 1974 just after the death of George Dyer; I believe Bacon died (artistically – even ‘spiritually') when Dyer died; Bacon was deeply traumatised by Dyer's death and never really returned to real painting after Dyer died; maybe Bacon's greatest last works were the triptych memorials to Dyer: August 1972 and May-June 1973 . Bacon had finished with painting after these masterpieces and merely mimicked painting without painting and ended up in what I term as inane illustration – like Hockney, Kitaj, Freud and Saville in fact!”

Alex boy		self portrait
Alex & Vicki

C:I don't agree with you. His style changed and probabily made worse...but something if not the most survived!for instance one of his last paintings not totally finished 1991 ” Study of a human body ” could have been a masterpiece and the 1986” Study for a portrait of John Edwards “ was a masterpiece. “You wrote that the reconstruction of the Studio in Dublin isn't an authentic archaeological operation like it claims to be because a lot of locusts and parasites had taken or stolen much of the Bacon memorabilia it once housed; but also: don't you think that the real crime is to show Bacon's awful abandoned and unfinished paintings?”

A: “The reconstruction of the Bacon Studio in Dublin is not an authentic replica of how the studio was left when he died because 7 Reece Mews was filched and pilfered by all the parasites and spongers who took away stacks of items including paintings, sketches, doodles, paint brushes, paint pots, bits of mirror, note books, art books, photos, porn, letters, clothes, whips, etc, etc. Over one third of the contents of the 7 Reece Mews studio was either given away or stolen. And all the abandon and unfinished paintings should have all been burnt.”

C : The same I'm grateful - thanks to Hugh lane Gallery- at least to can still smell his ghost in the Studio and Barbara Dawson and Margarita Cappock are remarkable art historians and delightful persons...rather one of the things that blemished Bacon's memory had been that awful sickening film Love is the Devil ...in which the painter is portrayed as a mean, spirited person yet he was one the most generous man I've ever met. He silently used to pay all the bills of his penniless friends...even to famous people like Sonia Orwell...”

A: “Yes! That awful film with a stupid, meaningless title Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998) is a total distortion of Bacon; it made Bacon look like a fucking poof, a camp queen all effete and camp. And Dyer was portrayed into a muscle Mary with a designer homofascist body which Dyer never had! John Maybury cannot direct film which is why he is a Derek Jarman clone (who was also a fake film director who died of AZT poisoning but the obituaries all lied and said he died of ‘AIDS' whatever that is.”

in front of Bacon's Popes

C: “What is your opinion about the British press, the art press and TV art documentaries about Bacon like Arena and the South Bank Show?”

A: “The British and art press tend to fall back on lazy clichés about Bacon: ‘terror', ‘horror', ‘distortion', ‘screaming popes', ‘despair', ‘alienation'; with meaningless banalities like: ‘the human condition' – what is ‘human' and what ‘condition'? Here is a typical example of lazy unthinking cliché writing on Bacon:” Ugly, obscene and terrifying - the grotesque figures in Francis Bacon's paintings disturbingly evoke the claustrophobia and voyeurism of Big Brother, writes Gordon Burn.” ( The human zoo , The Guardian , Saturday July 1, 2006). John Berger used to have this banal view Bacon painted only to shock but recently saw in Bacon a painter of ‘muteness' rather than the scream in his article Prophet of a pitiless world ( The Guardian , Saturday May 29, 2004).”

 C: “I feel something Baconian in Maggi Hambling although she is for my taste, as a painter, too naive. Or do you think not?”

A: “I admire Maggi Hambling tremendously and she is certainly not at all naïve but her painting still tends towards illustration which is too tame, safe and boring but she is far superior to Lucien Freud yet her prices are not nearly as high as Freud's!”

Alex Russell with Brian Adams

C “You didn't hesitate when you met the artist in 1981 to courageously tell Bacon that his late style was lifeless and too illustrational with the rather pallid paint and that he endlessly repeated the same formats and images in this weak, watered-down, etiolated manner. What was Bacon's reaction to your criticisms? Bacon also turned from deforming the human form in to subtracting its simple essence”

A: “I think Bacon was rather surprised by my directness because he became silent or changed the subject as far as I can remember. But Bacon did repeat himself as with the second version (1988) of the 1944 triptych – but the later version is clinical, lacklustre and lifeless. Bacon became bored with painting by 1980 and was not interested in the play of paint or the game of chance. Bacon simply lost the ability to manipulate paint; I would have destroyed all his paintings after 1980. Faggionato Fine Art own some of the late bloodless and lustless lacklustre paintings that are all absolutely awful and should have been destroyed by Bacon: just check out their glossy catalogue Francis Bacon: Paintings from the Estate: 1980-1991 and you will see for yourself that they are all watered down and weak works – not even the ghost of Bacon is present! Bacon really stopped painting in about 1974 just after the death of George Dyer; I believe Bacon died (artistically – even ‘spiritually') when Dyer died; Bacon was deeply traumatised by Dyer's death and never really returned to real painting after Dyer died; maybe Bacon's greatest last works were the triptych memorials to Dyer: August 1972 and May-June 1973. Bacon had finished with painting after these masterpieces and merely mimicked painting without painting and ended up in what I term as inane illustration – like Hockney, Kitaj, Freud and Saville in fact!”

C: “ I confirm, in my humble opinion, his last period too had been remarkable,colouristically even better … . …Did Bacon ever talk about Freud with you?”

A: Yes. Bacon told me how much he hated Freud's obsession with detail and also couldn't understand why he wanted to suck up to the establishment and aristocracy. Bacon also said how much he hated Freud's famous – and now stolen – portrait of him; he said it reminded him of one of those awful kitsch Woolworth's portraits of a crying peasant boy! You know – with the silver steak of tears and big eyes!”

The Goat Woman

C: “Barry Joule owns an early 1950s Bacon Screaming Pope – albeit dissected – and it was revealed in the documentary The Strange World of Barry Who? (BBC 4, 2004) – then it was reported stolen after being shown on TV. Do you think Joule actually hid it and pretended it was stolen to keep the Bacon Estate and other parasites and claimants off his back?”

A: “I suspect Joule probably hid the Screaming Pope fragment after it had been revealed on television of its location and people may have been asking how he acquired such a unique painting – if – indeed – it is by Bacon because Joule only allowed it to be filmed in a dim light! But is did have an eerie quality about it and didn't look like a fake; a Joule fake at any rate.”

C: “Why have you been marginalized or censored from the Bacon discourse (unlike Hirst)? Why are you, your art and writing, not in the public domain?”

A: “I prefer to be alien to such publicness anyway; I'd hate to have all the media attention like Hirst and Emin whom the media love – because they are easy, compliant, tame and safe and offer no threat and say the right things to the right people: they're careerists and I have no career. When I was reviewing the Michelangelo exhibition at the British Museum I over heard a reporter-journalist saying as she pointed to me: “You see that man, he is an artist and philosopher but we are not allowed to interview him or report on him.” I saw Edward Lucie-Smith and Michael Peppiatt at the Michelangelo exhibition but did not talk to them there though I spoke to Peppiatt a few years back a Clare Shenstone's show and found him charming and open. Peppiatt should be allowed to edit the Bacon catalogue raisonné and not Martin Harrison who knows nothing about Bacon but sadly the Bacon Estate has all the power – far too much power in my view .(editor's note :my opinion is totally the contrary. The Bacon Authentication Committee-in which Harrison is part of a team - is carring out a great work ) I also overheard by chance a lecturer saying to someone that they ‘cannot mention' my work or my website'. The Hugh Lane Gallery used to contact me but suddenly cut all ties about three years ago. Yet I find all this sort of silencing and marginalisation as rather invigorating, refreshing and liberating free from the evil media and public scrutiny and institutionalisation and becoming part of the nepotistic Art establishment – which is strikingly akin to the AIDS establishment – corrupt, careerist, self-preserving and self-serving – like New Labour!. Certain websites have also censored me with the caption: ‘cannot be mentioned for legal reasons'.   Whatever they are. It's like being dead; existing without ever existing; being mythic which is more interesting than being real, being there.”

with Eddie Gray,Alyson Hunter photo

Eddie Gray Charcoal

C: “Now a very serious question. We all know that Bacon was a perfectionist who used to destroy 60% of his work - and yet the Barry Joule's Archive rubbish surfaced unharmed and not destroyed. You recently gave me evidence that they (or the most of the items) could be forgeries. Can you explain this better and how the art establishment reacted?

More:You believe Alexey Jawlensly's  art was even greatest of Kandinsky, Matisse and Picasso and one of the very few comparable to Bacon. For what I understood of his aesthetical taste he would have certainly considered (maybe with few exception like the Danseur Sacharoff ) his female heads clumsy puppets and his watercolours childish low banality...”

    A: “Well – I infinitely prefer Jawlensky's watercolours to Bacon's sketches and alleged drawings! ( I deeply desagree,editor's note ) Yes: Bacon would have loathed Jawlensky yet ironically the mood of Bacon's later self portraits and Jawlensky's later meditations is uncannily akin and alike in meditative mood; also both bacon and Jawlensky both use those spherical discs on the cheeks of their portraits as if to pin-point a mood; also they often use similar colour schemes . Bacon is far more close to Jawlensky than he is to Picasso and Matisse even though he preferred these two giants to Jawlensky whom I have never even heard Bacon talk about. But bacon never spoke about Egon Schiele although a Marlborough Schiele catalogue was found in his studio. The Joule Archive fraud is no mystery to me at all: Joule ‘acquired' (stolen or given to him) some original material (photos, reproductions, etc) from the Reece Mews studio that were mark-free and merely added his own absurd scribbles – I can see why Joule was now called Bacon's ‘handy-man' – as he was certainly a ‘handy-forger'! Philip Mordue, the late John Edwards long-term partner, e-mailed me with evidence regarding Joule's fraud tactics. Mordue once lent Joule a three volume art book set in mint condition and when it was returned it was covered in numerous grubby marks associated with an art studio and identical to items in the Barry Joule Collection acquired by the Tate – more fool them for being so naïve and gullible for accepting such rubbish! I do not dispute that some of the original items/material may have come from Bacon's studio – my point is that the stuff was later tampered with and doctored by Joule: the marks are not by bacon's hand and I am very surprised that so called ‘art experts' cannot see this; it just goes to show how Serota and the Tate know nothing about Bacon's hand, Bacon's line. Yet when you said Bacon was a perfectionist and destroyed 60% of his work that may have been true in the 1950s or early 1960's – but Bacon did not destroy any of the rubbish he painted in the 1980s and early 1990s – maybe because he saw it as a ‘nest egg' – as future investment for John Edwards .”

With his father the famous movie director Ken Russell

C: “And what about the value of the holy triad R.B.Kitaj, Lucien Freud, and Frank Auerbach? (of the last one I remember the painter was not in love with the canvasses but he liked his drawings, for instance "the drawing in progress of Sandra")

A: “Kitaj and Freud I have always found deeply depressing, dull and dreary and totally overrated; Freud has been voted recently as Great Britain 's ‘favourite painter'! But then they voted for Big Brother Blair and Jade Good on Big Brother! Thus proving that democracy just dose not work! I think Auerbach is a far greater painter even though he is terribly messy and lacks real discipline and final judgement and lets things slip out of hand so to speak. Freud and Saville still paint via illustration – that is filling-in-form and painting-by-numbers and fear to let the paint speak like Auerbach bravely does.”

David Edwards and Barbara Dawson.Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino photo.

C: “You surprisingly are also a remarkable art critic and very unusual in describing recently the London Michelangelo drawings exhibition at the British Museum in which you felt that he was a maker of musical composition rather than a artist-draughtsman...but you wrote he didn't wish us to see his private preliminary sketches which only served for his trade as painter sculptor...but he used to present the most remarkable of them; for instance the last beautiful crucifixions to Princess Colonna (his last work a drawing: a fact that ever stunned Bacon)...”

A: “I think that Michelangelo's drawings were very private revelations and he would only ever show them to people he felt either close to or had some rapport with; drawings were like taking notes and not given any importance that they are now; yet drawing for Michelangelo was an intimate relation so he would rather have kept them to himself.”

C: “Can you explain to us better what is for you ‘Aids-Art' and how can you consider Aids a fraud and HIV a myth? So of what specific illness are the people supposed to be ‘infected' by HIV dying of?”

A: “They are all dying of well-known conditions from drug addiction to conditions relating to poverty which have been re-labelled as ‘AIDS' (if they are diagnosed as ‘HIV' – whatever that is!) I think ‘AIDS-Art' is sentimental kitsch and a myth in itself because it is constructed and predicated upon a myth and a lie to begin with – so ‘AIDS-Art' does not exist – like ‘HIV' does not exist! All the ‘AIDS-Art' that I see makes me sick because it is based upon an illusion and a lie! Remember: ‘AIDS' is merely the re-marketing and re-selling of well-known, around 29 older. Well-known disease conditions like TB and malaria. A simple way to explain the aids Fraud is this: if you have been diagnosed as ‘HIV' positive and have TB they then call TB ‘AIDS'! If you are ‘HIV' negative and have TB they call it TB: so being diagnosed as ‘HIV' means that almost any condition that you have will be re-named as ‘AIDS' related! So what we call ‘AIDS' is not new but around 30 older, well-known disease conditions. There is no evidence that anyone on our planet is ‘infected' with ‘HIV'. This is simply because ‘HIV' has never been isolated or recovered from a fresh blood sample or from semen! The Catholic Church should be made aware that condoms do not stop ‘AIDS' because condoms cannot stop TB, malaria, malnutrition and poverty which contribute to and cause ‘AIDS'. We should inform the Pope and Vatican that condoms do not and cannot stop ‘AIDS'. We know now that heavy recreational drug use can contribute to ‘AIDS': where ever we have so-called ‘HIV' epidemics we have recreational drug epidemics because drugs can make the non-specific ‘HIV' tests run ‘positive'. No one is ‘HIV' positive or has ‘AIDS' so we need to remove the designer brand labels ‘AIDS' – which initiates irrational fear and the false identity ‘HIV' – which forms a mass hysteria group identity – like a homofascist identity. Only by removing the terms ‘HIV' and ‘AIDS' can we then begin to treat people for the REAL conditions that they may have.”

Philip Pollock

C: “Are you still in favour to create a Bacon Prize? After the redundant and burocratic Turner Prize-once interesting- has become a sick bad joke?”

A: “I'm not sure now because there simply aren't enough good painters around anymore for a Bacon Prize so all you'd get is the mediocre fifth rate rubbish like Saatchi and Gagosian display…so it's not on the cards….Also the authoritarian Bacon Estate would probably not approve of a Bacon Prize anyway – unless it was called the Brian Clarke Prize! Remember: Clarke was never a real friend of John Edwards or Eddie Gray – just a casual acquaintance.”

C: “When you were with Bacon he said to you that he had never been paid on time by the Marlborough Gallery and that they robbed him blind conning him out of thousands. Did you ask him how he reacted to being cheated and robbed?”

A: “He shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘what can you do about these things'; he was resigned to the fact that the Marlborough ripped him off; as did all his so-called ‘friends' (that is: ‘parasites'). John Edwards knew the score – being an East Ender – it wasn't love at first site – it was money at first sight – ( editor's note:is not my opinion, John was just rich thanks to his family when he met the painter and Edwards family had been the only actually family the artist never had )but people are in denial about that; all this silly romantic nonsense about father-son or companionship, etc; I'm sure Francis loved John; but we all know John did not go with Bacon for his looks; Bacon was no ‘oil painting'! John Edwards was protective towards Bacon in order to stop him giving his money away to anyone else!”

C: ” What do you think of the so-called ‘official' Estate of Francis Bacon website and why does it not have a link to your School of Francis Bacon website but has a link to the estate's executor, Brian Clarke's website which in turn has absolutely nothing to do with Bacon?”

A: “Well, with all the money the Bacon Estate they could have done a lot better; it looks like some naff ‘O' level art student's Bacon fanzine! And the link to Brian Clarke's website is absurd and says more about his ego than an interest in links to other ‘unofficial' Bacon websites like mine or April Hunter's.

The Bacon Estate are in the process of preparing the complete Francis Bacon catalogue raisonne and I only just hope that Michael Peppiatt is commissioned to edit and write it and not Martin Harrsion or anyone else; only Peppiatt can do it. ( editor's note:As a matter of fact Michaell Peppiatt had been hugily fired by the Estate-now Bacon Authentication Committee- and Bacons official's gallerist Gerard Faggionato spurn him outspokenly) But Clarke has the power to dictate who does it but I'm not so sure they will ever be a ble to have the complete works because there are many paintings that the rather secluded and secretive Bacon Estate knows nothing about so I very much doubt we will ever have a ‘complete work's of Bacon ever published.”

Alex&Nigel

Alex&Clive

C: “Whatever happened about the John Edwards Charitable Trust that was meant to be a sort of educational and research funding body for Bacon scholars – like yourself?”

A: “Well, I think they partly funded Martin Harrison's rather badly written but glossy coffee table book: In Camera: Francis Bacon: Photography, Film And the Practice .

(editor's note:this interview had been taped some time ago and for many reasons I thought more suitable to surface this article now.
Meanwhile The Estate Bacon changed in Bacon Authentication Committee.
These scholars showed a strict poignant honesty in making his Catalogue Raisonè.
For instance one of his member Hugh M.Davies flyed from United States to Italy only to control a postcard which a roman antique dealer claimed had been drawed by Bacon)

What the Estate should do is commission a book on: Bacon's Paint In Close-Up – because the paint – to me - is a unique element in making the images in Bacon's painting but we never – if ever have – see the textures of the paint in close up in reproductions - apart from viewing the paintings in-the-flesh as it were at exhibitions. All the current books on Bacon always tend to show the same reproductions but rarely – if ever – blown up in detail. Yet this is essential for art students and scholars alike: to seethe manipulation of Bacon's paint – and this can only be done right close-up; the use and abuse of paint is what makes Bacon's images so powerfully arresting and utterly unique.”

Bacon in his Studio

C: “Finally,without sounding too intrusive, the Soho painter, poet and photographer Alyson Hunter told me you and her are both mildly dyslexic (some scientists argue that a minor form of dyslexia could even help one in becoming a genius;!) What does being dyslexic mean to you and how does it effect your philosophical writings?”

A: “Dyslexia is really word blindness - or word laziness - and my dyslexia maybe be linked to my artistic autism and my Asperger's Syndrome; I could not read or write until I was 14 so I was a spastic retard idiot child; but today as a writer I cannot read my own writing as it is always alien; as Blanchot said: a writer can never read his own work – like a painter can never see his own work; which is why authentic art is alien, autistic, asperger, as it were. Alyson and I have spoken about this and try and use or abuse our dyslexia to our advantage; and - words are blind anyway! Language itself is always dyslexic. Asperger's Syndrome is an Ereignis ethos of being an alien artist, composer or write – poet and philosopher – an abjected way of being out of the world: Mozart, Spinoza, Kant, Beethoven, Bartok, van Gogh, Orwell and even Warhol had Asperger's Syndrome – which is a form of obsessive-compulsive-repetitive disorder – or order –depending on how you interpret it; it is not a pathology but an ontology; an intense, instinctive inward wayward way of being. And for me being obsessive-compulsive-repetitive is an asset for my artistic creativity and philosophical writing because one does it all outside thinking about it; one does it all subconsciously; almost unconsciously; where it does one.”
The autistic and artistic attitude are the really same just as 'autism' and 'artism' are one and the same alien condition.”

   
Francis Bacon happy in Italy

A : About the drawings Bacon gave you: one of the drawings you gave Eddie was rather convincing with Baconeque arabesque curves of the figure, and the signature seemed genuine. But why did Bacon sign drawings that are rather awful in my opinion? They seem to be drawn from the imagination and not directly from life. And why did Bacon use pencil and not charcoal because pencil is far too rigid, literal and illustrational whilst charcoal is much more fluid and flexible like oil paint. Pencil is conscious working whilst oil paint is unconscious working; pencil is predictable whilst oil paint is unpredictable: pencil goes right against Bacon's ethos of accident and chance because pencil cannot really be a rehearsal tool for chance and the free play of oil paint. Bacon could throw paint - but not pencil! Bacon said to Sylvester: "What I am disrupting all the time is this literalness, because I find it uninteresting...With oil paint being so fluid, the image is changing all the time while you're working." So why did Bacon do these 'drawings' which have this 'uninteresting literalness'? For composition and layout maybe? But the sense the space in the drawings is out of sync with the scale of his paintings.

Alex & Neil

C .- They ARE from life. Many are portraits of me ,self portraits (like,I guess,the one  by Eddie you like ...dissimilar from  his selfportraits paintings?Well he was using a pencil, not a paintbrush..) many of friends he never had the possibility to portrait (for instance Enzo Gribaudo, his italian editor in chief ,to whom he had promised among witness to make a portrait)and above all with the powerfull but easy medium of drawing he had the possibility to RECOVER subjects he wasn't satisfied like,is universally known,Popes and crucifixions...As you know  better than mine he SOMETIMES used models.Generally he workedwith pictures or by heart (and so did with the drawings).Why did them?

I wasn't the only reason.He FELT he was repeating his stykle in a dull unpowerfull way in his last years...(I used to say Francis creativitly once received you in his skaughterhouse, last  in his sitting room) I suggested him:"Why don't you make sculptures like your mith Michelngelo?" AND I CONNECTED HIM with the greatest producer of Marmo di Carrara in Italy, Carlo Nicoli,  and NOBODY KNOWS ( me,yes)Nicoli stayed some days in 7 Reece Meew to taste if he had a talent to sculpture(as recently Carlo told me he HE HAD IT ... but obviously the jelous people who surrounded him immediately reacted   exagerating the risk for him of the marble dust..)  so I added (take care of the date:1978,some months after I met him!)"why don't you make regularly drawings ,in renaissance frequently they were  better than the reference paintings,and you generally say Michelangelo drawings are are the most beautiful thing ever...”
In a book that maybe is not a case  he suggested me ("F.Auerbach by R.Hughes") is written pg. 195:"...he could do things with lines that he could not manage with paint...drawings is a more lighter  and more experimental  medium  than painting.." finally ,as Edward Lucie Smith with great sensibility wrote me: "... Your drawings are not preparatory. They were clearly made as independent art works.The question is why were they made? I suppose they were a kind of secret love-letter toyou - the ghost of the full relationship Francis wanted to have with you. And in a way - forgive my saying so - a malicious gift or legacy, as he musthave known they would cause endless complications once he was gone..." and don't forget he could succeded in kept them invisible,very difficult wit sculptures or others paintings... Why pencils and not charcoals ? The most of the renaissaince drawings(for which he was long for) had been made with pencils and sanguigne(he made also some sanguigne)not by charchoals.He didn't like the extreme brittleness of charcoals and he liked the way with which the pencil is able to hurt the paper (impossible with charcoals).

You think you could have bee able to do dome some of this sketches when you was a child.. well,Alex,congratulations.....as for what you draw now (let me be please friendly outspoken)your sketches  frequent are too much affectedly vortical...a part  that you concentrate your lines more in the face than in the body (exactly like Francis..)any way please save your invectives to the horrible rubbish(that infantile garbage,yes !) of the Barry Joule Archive....You , certainly a great talent and  probabily as artist the hair of Bacon, a little remember me what-as reported in the Renaissance chronicles-Giulio Romano ,the scholar of Raffaello Sanzio, used to claim :"I'm much more skilfull and corageous in my works than him!!"
But nowadays we don't think he was better than the Master of Urbino...

A. “But Bacon was NOT a renaissance artist and was not classically trained as a draughtsman so why would he suddenly use pencil which is tool to draw a literal likeness which Bacon detested, because pencil is too illustrational (even Giacometti's pencil drawings are far too illustrational and literal): - unlike charcoal which is much more open to chance. Bacon's paint is also often ‘brittle' like the texture of charcoal! Charcoal is much more logical for Bacon because it has a rough, gritty and grainy texture akin to his paint; refined and restrained for Bacon's ‘in your face' brutality of fact!”

C :” Certainly he wasn't but he would have longed to be. Renaissance,classical,baroque.I'm deeply convinced that the “armature”of his frantic Eindhoven Crucifixion is the picture of an arn-owl but his real reference were paintings like the flat earthwormly Ruben's Christ of the Crucifixion in Anversa.And,yes,your observations about charcoals are poignant,would have said Francis with one of his typical word.But one of his typical assertion was too:”The border is all.”.What you loose in change you earn in controllability with pencils.And Alex you must not forget how uneasy are charcoals to manage.They crumbles,get dirty,need a protective spray .One can be in love or puzzled with the drawings he gave me.Certainly they proove that to be death is not enough to stop Francis to amaze people.

Two geniuses in the same family: Alex & Daddy