Conville & Walsh

Many visual artists made startling, demonic images during the course of the dark, foreboding 20th century but none did so with more authority than the painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992). His paintings of the 1940s bore witness to the shattered psychology of the time and shot him to prominence that hardly diminished over the next fifty years. He captured sexuality, violence and isolation in his unflinching depictions of the anxieties of the modern condition.

He became the modern master of the monstrous; an iconic figure in Western culture.

That emblematic ‘mastery’ makes Bacon a particularly important subject for a biography: His paintings capture both the futility and the furies of post-war life. But he also became an emblematic figure in gay history; an essential advocate of the ‘outsider’s’ perspective in Western society. ‘I live in, you may say, a gilded squalor’, Bacon said of his life, which oscillated between elegant lunches and dinners and nocturnal adventures in the dark corners of London. Even his celebrity, which could seem, at times, like a trashy halo, conveyed something important about the surrounding society. He represents much more, in short, than just another painter’s idiosyncratic view of the world.

Today, the fascination with Bacon shows no sign of diminishing. In 2008, a triptych sold at Christie’s for $51.7 million. And 2008 sees a major retrospective of Bacon’s work at Tate Britain, which subsequently will tour the world.

Mark and Annalyn bring Bacon to life on the page; capturing as precisely as possible the character of the man and his world. Relying on the work of earlier writers and their own comprehensive new research, they put this remarkable life into a rich panorama, bringing together the personal and the emblematic sides of Bacon.

About the Authors

Mark Stevens is the former art critic of New York magazine. He has also been the art critic for the New Republic and Newsweek and has written numerous essays published in books, art magazines, catalogues and general interest publications, including: New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times. His essays for New York magazine were among the finalists for a 2005 National Magazine Award. A graduate of Princeton University and King’s College, Cambridge, he was, most recently, a 2007-2008 Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.

Annalyn Swan is the former arts editor of Newsweek and an award-winning music critic. She began her career at Time magazine and has written for The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and New York magazine, among others. As an independent book and magazine editor, she has worked with many of the leading journalism organizations in the U.S., among them Time Inc., U.S. News & World Report, and Forbes. A graduate of Princeton University, she was named a Marshall Scholar and earned her master’s degree at King’s College, Cambridge. She is a former trustee of Princeton University.