Featuring more than 50 works from the 1940s onwards, Human Presence at the National Portrait Gallery explores Francis Bacon’s deep connection to portraiture and how he challenged traditional definitions of the genre.
An uncanny, enthralling self-portrait greets visitors at the entrance of *Francis Bacon: Human Presence* at the National Portrait Gallery. Yet, curiously, it sets an oddly misleading tone for what is billed as the "first exhibition in nearly 20 years to focus on his portraits." After all, Bacon’s oeuvre has always centred on the human condition—his "portraits" are but extensions of his obsession with the human animal, as much corporeal as existential. To isolate 55 works and label them as portraits seems, in some ways, to do a disservice to Bacon's broader vision, especially when the only truly recognisable face among them is his own.
Take, for instance, the presence of Muriel Belcher, who appears three times in a sequence, her visage spinning like a vortex. Her pencilled eyebrows arch over a high forehead, thinning hair framing the face. Meanwhile, John Edwards, one of Bacon's closest companions, sits casually in his underwear, casting a faint, pink shadow reminiscent of Lynn Chadwick’s abstract bronze sculptures. Then there’s Henrietta Moraes, lying nude on a ticking mattress, her body contorted, corkscrewed into impossible angles, her features so warped they are beyond recognition. This image, like so many others, is rooted in a photograph—a staged and intimate moment captured by John Deakin, who later sold copies of his work to sailors in Soho, charging ten shillings apiece.
John Maybury, filmmaker and one of the contributors to the exhibition’s catalogue, offers a striking description of the gay community frequenting Belcher’s notorious Colony Room Club during a time when homosexuality remained illegal: "The fearlessness of emboldened alcoholics allowed to shout into the void in a small, nicotine-stained green room." This phrase resonates with the force and colour of Bacon's art, where the very essence of the Colony Room’s viridian walls seeps into the portraits of Peter Lacy, the man whom Bacon claimed as the love of his life. The toxic energy of that relationship, marked by violence and emotional strain, lingers in these works, but the depth of their connection is elusive. Lacy’s face, distorted like all the rest, becomes just another presence among Bacon's grotesquely beautiful universe.
To label Bacon’s work as merely "uneasy" or "claustrophobic," as critics often do, overlooks its vibrancy, its unbridled energy, and the raw beauty that pulses through each canvas. Indeed, Bacon himself once pondered whether Lacy’s neurosis had permeated his works, but how could anyone truly discern this? In Bacon’s world, every figure is compacted, distorted, and defamiliarised, including Lacy. And yet, beneath this distortion lies a deeply personal connection to each subject—a paradox that both unsettles and fascinates.
Some of Bacon's paintings, by their titles alone, hint at traditional portraiture. Works such as *Study for a Pope* or *Seated Woman* suggest a direct representation, yet the figures within them are anything but ordinary sitters. Bacon’s muses range from past lovers like Peter Lacy and George Dyer, to friends such as Muriel Belcher, the flamboyant proprietor of the Colony Room, and artist Isabel Rawsthorne. But the term "depiction" seems inadequate when faced with the squashed, twisted faces that emerge from the dark backgrounds, faces so plastic and amorphous, and yet so impossibly defined. How does Bacon achieve this? It’s as if the very act of painting becomes an alchemical process. Blurs of paint turn to solid forms, evaporations condense into features, and the whole thing teeters on the edge of abstraction and representation, yet never tips into either entirely. Bacon is, and remains, the most mysterious of conjurors.
The exhibition begins with men in black—shadowy figures, sometimes screaming, sometimes confined to cages, but always isolated, solitary. A mouth opens in a silent scream, the top of the head seemingly erased by the thick nightclub darkness. A man in a sharp suit leans on a ghostly barline. Who are these figures? Bacon gives no clues, and it seems unlikely the curators know either. They could be anyone from Peter Lacy to the notorious Ronnie Kray, or even comedian Kenneth Williams. Bacon’s work veers wildly from tragic agony to farcical comedy, his howling figures as likely to reveal a sharp set of tiny, pearl-white teeth as to display raw suffering.
As the exhibition progresses, we are drawn deeper into Bacon’s private world. His signature backdrops—flat, geometric spaces in luminous darkness—hint at unknown bedrooms, bars, or prisons. Faces seem as though they’ve been smashed sideways by some invisible force, leaving one eye peering through the chaos while the other is obliterated, often hidden behind shattered lenses reminiscent of *Battleship Potemkin*.
One revelation of this exhibition is Bacon’s use of colour. His mastery of hue is sensational: cobalt blues ooze from canvases like liquid velvet, while rich papal purples, golds, and fiery oranges burn with intensity. Bacon reserved different palettes for different lovers, with George Dyer’s profile framed against a deep alizarin crimson—a blood-like stain that seems to seep into the very fabric of the canvas, especially in the triptych that depicts Dyer’s tragic suicide.
The curators seem eager for us to decode these paintings biographically, searching for narrative and incident in each brushstroke. Yet such readings can feel reductive, almost an imposition. Bacon himself frequently disregarded likeness in favour of something more essential—life’s violent and unpredictable energy. His self-portraits, which sometimes borrow the body of Lucian Freud or reference Kafka, are not concerned with superficial accuracy. Instead, they are extraordinary evocations of human vitality, so raw, so wild, that they transcend the conventions of portraiture altogether.
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