Discoveries: Francis Bacon

This paperback book on the great British painter Francis Bacon is invaluable. Though small in size, there is a wealth of materials presented - portions of the many interesting interviews conducted with him over the years, a great amount of documentary photographs of Bacon, his works, his studio and his friends, including many color reproductions of his paintings. Also helpful to the reader is that the sizes of the paintings are given in both inches and cm, and that even the locations of the paintings in museums and private collections today are given. I though I knew much about Francis Bacon, but the information on his working methods was new to me. Even his use of corduroy cloth to make certain effects on the surfaces of his paintings. I ended up buying three copies of this book. One for me and two for my artist friends.

This is a beautifully produced little book, full of excellent reproductions and elaborate pull-outs of Bacon's triptychs which give greater scope for appreciation than more conventional formats allow. Domino's text initially seems more simplistic than simple, discussing the artist's life, work, methods and themes very accessibly and predictably, but you end up with a clear sense of the art and its mechanics which might have been obscured in more technical books. It is as frustratingly ahistorical as Bacon's paintings though, and this book (as well as a recent visit to teh Dublin retrospective) tends to confirm my suspicions that Bacon was not as great as we all once thought. The book appends a section called 'Documents', full of reminiscences from acquaintances, and analyses by the likes of Gilles Deleuze.

Christophe Domino has managed to distill a body of work into a near pocket-sized edition, but with amamzing accuracy and attention to detail. As an admirer of Bacon's work and ideas, it is obvious that a book like this would not have been possible without the seminal work of writers David Sylvester and Michael Peppiatt respectively, but it is very well done none the less. From background information on the artist to one of the most suprising collection of photographic references available to date, the author does an outstanding job of doing with this book what most books twice this size struggle with. This book is highly recommended for anyone who is curious about the work of Francis Bacon, or simply as an amazing and concise review of facts for those who are already aware of the genius of the "greatest living (now deceased) painter".