Portrait of Michel Leiris, 1976
Portrait of Michel Leiris | |
---|---|
Artist | Francis Bacon |
Year | 1976 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Location | Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris |
Portrait of Michel Leiris (sometimes Study for Portrait of Michel Leiris) is a 1976 oil-on-canvas-panel painting by the Irish-born British artist Francis Bacon. It is the first of two portraits Bacon made of his close friend, the French surrealist writer and anthropologist Michel Leiris;[1] the second followed in 1978.
The painting has been in the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, since it was gifted by Michel and Louise Leiris in 1984.[2] It was described by art critic and curator David Sylvester as "easily Bacon's finest portrait in close-up".[3]
Description
Leiris is depicted against a flat black background,[4] his face rendered in a radial swirl of luminous colours,[3] his features distorted in a style typical of Bacon's portraits of the 1960s and 1970s. Only his left eye remains intact from these distortions, and is over-sized compared to the rest of his face; the theme of the painting seems to center on the sense of vision.[5] He sees to be, according to the critic Ernst van Alphen "under the influence of something he sees. He is in a kind of hypnotic trance".[6]
The painting places an emphasis on Leiri's skull, and has been compared x-ray photographs used as source for his 1933 Crucifixion. For the same reason, and because of its reconstruction of the human head, it has also been compared to African Tribal masks, which Bacon was keenly interested in.[3]
References
Sources
- Davies, Hugh; Yard, Sally. Francis Bacon. New York: Cross River Press, 1986. ISBN 0-89659-447-5
- Russell, John. Francis Bacon (World of Art). New York: Norton, 1971. ISBN 0-500-20169-2
- Sylvester, David. Looking back at Francis Bacon. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000. ISBN 0-500-01994-0
- van Alphen, Ernst. Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self. London: Reaktion Books, 1992. ISBN 0-948462-33-7
- v
- t
- e
- Crucifixion (1933)
- Wound for a Crucifixion (1933)
- Fragment of a Crucifixion (1950)
- Figure in a Landscape (1945)
- Painting 1946 (1946)
- Study for Crouching Nude (1952)
- Two Figures (1953)
- Three Studies from the Human Head (1953)
- Study for Portrait II (After the Life Mask of William Blake) (1955)
- Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe (1968)
- Study for a Bullfight, Number 2 (1969)
- Three Studies of the Male Back (1970)
- Blood on the Floor (painting) (1986)
- Study after Velázquez (1950)
- Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953)
- Figure with Meat (1954)
- Untitled (Pope) (c. 1954)
- Study from Innocent X (1962)
- Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd version 1971 (1971)
- Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944)
- Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962)
- Three Figures in a Room (1964)
- Crucifixion (1965)
- Triptych Inspired by T.S. Eliot's Poem "Sweeney Agonistes" (1967)
- Two Figures Lying on a Bed with Attendants (1968)
- Triptych, 1976 (1976)
- Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus (1981)
- Second Version of Triptych 1944 (1988)
- Triptych–August 1972 (1972)
- Triptych, May–June 1973 (1973)
- Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer (1964)
- Portrait of George Dyer Talking (1966)
- Three Studies for George Dyer (1967)
- Portrait of George Dyer and Lucian Freud (1967)
- Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969)
- Portrait of Michel Leiris, 1976 (1976)
- Three Studies for Self Portrait (1973)
- Self-portrait (1973)
- Three Studies for Self-Portrait (1979)
- Study for a Self-Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86 (1985–86)
- Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (1981 book)
- Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998 film)