KAREN WILKIN
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early pieces in the show, while subject to more variation, nonetheless adhere
to known conventions of 1930s Surrealism, via Picasso. Unlike Kiefer's cos–
mic horror, Bacon's domain is domestic horror, suggested by his rendering
the human face and figure as though they were melting or mutilated. In one
of the early paintings, a plucked chicken with a toothy mouth, stretched in
what will become a signature rictus, seems to have provided Bacon with an
archetype for human anatomy that has lasted to the present. In paintings
from the sixties on, violence is signalled by overpainting and smudging of
faces and bodies, while background details, such as the ubiquitous light bulb,
remain intact and respectfully rendered. Arrows tell us where the significant
bits are.
There's little sign of evolution. Later Bacons get more schematic and
cartoon-like, until by the 1980s, they suggest a Walt Disney version of de
Kooning. In general, the quality of the paintings hardly supports the exalted
claims made for Bacon - a catalogue essay by the distinguished and other–
wise admirable scholar, Lawrence Gowing, comparing him
to
the most emi–
nent of the old masters, is typical - but if the paintings fail to be stirring, for–
mally, neither is the imagery startling. Even the naked men, engaged in what
are usually private activities, seem artful and tasteful. It all seems, somehow,
very British, like the national fondness for official institutions and scatalogical
humor. The strongest impression left by the show is of extraordinary pom–
posity and pretentiousness: all those big gold frames and the insistence, in the
titles, that these highly finished , large, signed, expensively presented com–
modities are merely humble "studies" for something else.
The summer season promises to be an exciting one in New York. In
July , the overlap of two splendid exhibitions,
Matisse in Morocco
at The
Museum of Modern Art and
The Russian Taste in French Painting,
at the
Metropolitan, will make it possible to see an extraordinary selection of first–
rate Matisses, usually housed in Moscow and Leningrad -
to
say nothing of
the delights of the Matisse exhibition, in general, which reunited the spec–
tacular paintings and drawings done on the artist's extended stays in Tangier
in 1912 and 1913, or the joys of seeing the Poussins, Bonnards, Cezannes
and other gems in the Russian show. The Whitney Museum will be offering
a long overdue retrospective of Hans Hofmann, following a fine view of the
intimate watercolors and canvases of the pioneer modernist from Boston,
Maurice Prendergast, while the Brooklyn Museum will be showing Edouard
Vuillard's " Intimate Interiors." Oust ignore the psychological effusions of the
text panels and use your eyes.)
