Sunday 3 May 2009

Bacon: Contradiction and suggestion

Bacon, Three studies for a crucifixion, 1962

Bacon: I want a very ordered image, but I want it to have come about by chance.
Sylvester: It's a matter of reconciling opposites I suppose; of making the thing be contradictory things at once.
Bacon: Well, isn't this that one wants a thing to be as factual as possible and at the same time as deeply suggestive, or deeply unlocking of areas of sensations other than simple illustration of the object that you set out to do? Isn't that what all art is about?

Francis Bacon in conversation with David Sylvester, 1966