Galleries - May 2010

Five major Francis Bacon paintings not previously seen in this country form the core of a distinctly provocative new show at Compton Verney, one in which co-curators Martin and Antonia Harrison use film, photography and other artefacts (much of it from the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin City Gallery) to suggest that Bacon, rather than shunning drawing (as much recent scholarship has it), just had other, equivalent, ways of going about making his paintings. Centralto this were his highly idiosyncratic ways with photo- graphy, the ripping, twisting and folding processes he employed with the medium, they suggest, having certain elements in common with the method of preparatory drawing. There is some visualevidence, also presented here, that he could, on occasion, even be a quite competent conventional draughtsman; but that isn't perhaps the point, which is really that Bacon, in his desire to present his art as an entirely spontaneous achievement, was keen to cover up, as far as possible, the often complex preparatory methods and profound understandings of past art by which he aimed at getting a painting "onto the nervous system", of creating "the grin without the cat". But he did nonetheless leave that studio intact, for us to find . . . DA VINCI OWED . . . Gallerist Caroline Wiseman has just turned her 2009 book The Leonardo Question (an enquiry into the possible future direction of modern art) into a play, to be premièred at the Olive Tree Theatre, Islington, from 4 to 24 June. Among those quizzed in the course of it are Picasso, Peggy Guggenheim, Tracey and Damien and of course the maestro from Vinci himself . . . BACON revised F ancis Bacon, ‘Untitled’ (Sea), 1954, oil on canvas at Compton Verney