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The earliest of Bacon's paintings of Popes, this combines a number of themes which were to recur in many of his later works: the framework around the figure, like a glass box; the tassel; the paraphrase of Valasquez's portrait of Popr Innocent X; and the screaming mouth derived from the close-up of the nurse from Battleship Potemkin. Bacon, in point of fact, has never seen the painting by Valasquez, but knows it only from photographs; he departs widely from the colours of the origional and paints the robe a purpilsh ultramarine instead of a wine red. The films of Einsenstein; the great pioneer of the dramatic use of montage, have been of special interest to him, above all the famous Odessa steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin.
Exhib Ctg. Tate Gallery, 24 may-1 July, 1962
"The shock of the picture, when it was seen with a whole
series of heads in Bacon's exhibition a the Hanover Gallery in London at Christmas 1949,
was indescribable. ... It was everything unpardonable. The paradoxical appearance at once
of pastiche and iconoclasm was indeed one of Bacon's most original strokes. The picture
remains one of his masterpieces and one of the least conventional, least foreseeable pictures
of the twentieth century."
Lawrence Gowing
Exhibition catalogue
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
October 1989
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