In 1983 I graduated from Reading University, necessitating a return to the prison of my family home. Subversion was impossible. Any attempt to avoid toeing the line meant suffering for my mother, at the hands of my father.
One day, I will write and publish my autobiography. It may not make easy reading.
Quasi-subversion was expressed by me gingerly, by proxy and in a diluted form. I aligned secretly with music, art and poetry of a type of which which my father disapproved and forbade in the home. I became obsessed with Herman Hesse's NARZISS UND GOLDMUND and with Zola's LA FAUTE DE L'ABBÉ MOURET; both remain favourite novels of mine to this day and both deal with themes of incarceration and rebellion.
A university friend of mine had gone on, after Reading, to study for her PGCE at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. She was a lifeline to me, helping me to stay relatively sane and adjusted, during the difficult times when my father clasped me back to his narcissistic bosom and attempted to clone me – metaphorically, but only slightly so – in his image.
I regularly visited my friend in her University halls, on which occasions she introduced me to the Sainsbury Centre, an art gallery and museum in the University grounds off the Earlham Road in Norwich. https://www.sainsburycentre.ac.uk/
My friend's guiding of me towards this incredible seat of artistic concentration was a baptism, not of fire, but of sweetest milk; of the headiest and most intoxicating experience.
At The Sainsbury Centre I discovered so much of the art that I now revere, including sculptures by Elisabeth Frink, sculptures and paintings by Modigliani, drawings and sculptures by Alberto Giacometti and, most persuasively and indelibly, paintings by Francis Bacon.
Over the past few days, I have been visiting my recently bereaved sister who lives in Norwich. I took the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the Sainsbury Centre for the first time in nine years since we both attended the incredible exhibition FRANCIS BACON AND THE MASTERS there in the summer of 2015. https://www.francis-bacon.com/bacons-world/exhibitions/francis-bacon-and-masters
Regular readers of this column will know of my confused, push-pulled artistic background, to say nothing of of the wider spectrum of my tainted upbringing. My mother, the artist in the family, was more Renoir than Bacon and I suspect that she found the latter's work a little degenerate.
In contrast to my father however, she always respected my taste and opinion and when I came back home from Norwich raving about Francis Bacon, she was a fount of encouragement and positivity.
The Sainsbury Centre is a vast metal and glass structure, designed by Norman Foster – the architect of the stunning Viaduc de Millau https://www.fosterandpartners.com/projects/millau-viaduct – which is my corridor of passage when I visit my beloved South of France by car. In itself, the Sainsbury Centre from the outside carries a delicate simplicity, as functional as it is massively, airily beautiful.
The bulk of the Sainsbury constitutes a single, vast room – warm, tranquil, offering a hum of hushed conversation and, this week, a small video installation playing contemplative music on loop. For someone who is, like me, mildly claustrophobic and shuns crowds, no gallery space could be more ideal. As I walk around, I catch myself sighing in private ecstasy.
When I first started, at the Sainsbury Centre forty years ago, to drink in the glorious marks that Francis Bacon made upon his canvases, the reaction inside me was visceral, and it continues to be so. One of the benefits of the Sainsbury is the superb lighting that makes close examination of Bacon's mark-making so possible, turning it into a compulsion for me.
My world changed when I discovered with my own eyes the way in which Bacon pressed a rag into his paint, leaving its imprint, or screwed and twisted a brush in the paint 'alla prima' to create that familiar distorted, deconstructed muzzle in many of his faces, a twisted non-reality that the artist believed transcended figurative accuracy in its representational truth. This iconic technique is visible in the detail of TWO FIGURES IN A ROOM above, and also in the images below.
I visit the Sainsbury Centre rarely; I always prefer to save the most precious experiences for the right moment, to enjoy in sparing and rationed ecstasy. This week, I nearly went back the following morning, but resisted the temptation. What is special and shining in its beauty needs savouring as a rare jewel, and none too often.
What I did do, rejoicingly, was visit FRANCIS BACON:HUMAN PRESENCE in London the very next day! https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/francis-bacon-portraits
This is an overwhelming exhibition. Go and see it. For me, the smaller portraits in the collection make the greatest impact. Tender, intimate in their searing honesty, they show us a less familiar Bacon than that of the vast canvases bearing troubled figures, sometimes seated as if in an electric chair, sometimes writhing in sexual combat or in existential anguish, incarcerated by a silvery cage.
These small pieces are probing, sad, loving, profound, and probing.
What is it about Francis Bacon? He spoke of humans 'living through screens' and that “I sometimes think, when people say my work looks violent, that perhaps I have from time to time been able to clear away one or two of the veils or screens.”
I particularly like it that, while many of us artists like to speak of a disconnection from the self when we paint, that 'It Paints' - as I do believe is a real, though scarce occurrence https://www.artfullyabstractedblog.com/post/it-paints , Bacon presents a refreshingly candid standpoint.
“I think art is an obsession with life and, after all, as we are human beings our greatest obsession is with ourselves.”
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN Copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024
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