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Francis Bacon in Your Blood
It is a story I have been wanting to write for a long time, telling it as it really was before that whole world that I shared with Francis vanishes... Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in June 1963 in Soho's French House to request an interview for a student magazine that he was editing. Bacon invited him to lunch, and over oysters and Chablis they began a friendship and a no-holds-barred conversation that would continue until Bacon's death thirty years later. Fascinated by the artist's brilliance and charisma, Peppiatt accompanied him on his nightly round of prodigious drinking from grand hotel to louche club and casino, seeing all aspects of Bacon's 'gilded gutter life' and meeting everybody around him, from Lucian Freud and Sonia Orwell to East End thugs; from predatory homosexuals to Andy Warhol and the Duke of Devonshire. He also frequently discussed painting with Bacon in his studio, where only the artist's closest friends were ever admitted. The Soho photographer, John Deakin, who introduced the young student to the famous artist, called Peppiatt 'Bacon's Boswell'. Despite the chaos that Bacon created around him, Peppiatt managed to record scores of their conversations ranging over every aspect of life and art, love and death, the revelatory and hilarious as well as the poignantly tragic. Gradually Bacon became a kind of father figure for Peppiatt, and the two men's lives grew closely intertwined. In this intimate and deliberately indiscreet account, Bacon is shown close-up, grand and petty, tender and treacherous by turn, and often quite unlike the myth that has grown up around him. This is a speaking portrait, a living likeness, of the defining artist of our times.
417 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 27, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
July 14, 2016
It's sort of inspiring to read about the way Francis Bacon would spend money - endless rounds of drinks for himself and all his friends (and plenty of people who became his friends because he bought them drinks), dinner night after night at the most expensive restaurants in Paris and London, him always footing the bill for everyone. All in all, a fat fucking pig wallowing in excess... While I don't exactly dream of being rich, it makes me think maybe I could stand to be a little bit looser, more generous. Maybe I should start buying drinks for random people, taking homeless people out to dinner, etc...
Everything about Francis Bacon is inspiring in one way or another. Luxury is less than half the story. However, it's the part that's easiest to tell, given that the well-heeled generally have a better chance of surviving and writing books. Michael Peppiatt has already written the definitive biography Francis Bacon: Anatomy Of An Enigma. What he does here is much more personal, a memoir of his own friendship with the man. They met in the sixties when Peppiatt was a young student fresh out of Oxford and Bacon had already achieved great success and notoriety in postwar Britain. Their relationship would last until Bacon's death in '92, and though Peppiatt knew him well it's clear there were realms which the younger man could only dimly intuit.
Here he is in the 70's, alone with a room full of Bacons
I practically had to gasp when I read this, as it seemed so true yet rarely said. It's the most natural thing in the world for figurative painters to paint their lovers and lust objects. No one would think of denying this of, say, Picasso or Gauguin. Yet Bacon's sexuality still feels weirdly closeted. His reputation extends well beyond some niche ghetto of gay s&m art. He's often, if not universally, regarded as one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century. So perhaps it's a little embarrassing for many to acknowledge that so much of his work depicts the extremes of a certain kind of love. Better to focus instead on themes which are allegedly more "universal."
In any case, Peppiatt himself is heterosexual and, it would appear, pretty vanilla in his proclivities. He accompanies Bacon to gala openings and drinking bouts with the beau-monde of the art world, but hears only rumors of the man's sexual adventures. I personally would have liked to read more about Bacon's cruising habits, how exactly he pursued the rough trade he so adored throughout his life.
But then of course this lacuna isn't really Peppiatt's fault. Bacon wanted it that way. While extremely effusive and open in some respects, he was also careful to cultivate secrecy and separation between the various aspects of his life. Our friends never let us into their lives completely.
*
The narrator tells the artists he'd going to be a father and the artist, by then a very old man, reacts thus
Here I think we find another great example of Francis Bacon as role model. Indeed I myself had a similar response when my brother announced he and his wife were having a baby.
Everything about Francis Bacon is inspiring in one way or another. Luxury is less than half the story. However, it's the part that's easiest to tell, given that the well-heeled generally have a better chance of surviving and writing books. Michael Peppiatt has already written the definitive biography Francis Bacon: Anatomy Of An Enigma. What he does here is much more personal, a memoir of his own friendship with the man. They met in the sixties when Peppiatt was a young student fresh out of Oxford and Bacon had already achieved great success and notoriety in postwar Britain. Their relationship would last until Bacon's death in '92, and though Peppiatt knew him well it's clear there were realms which the younger man could only dimly intuit.
Here he is in the 70's, alone with a room full of Bacons
Are these things essentially about sex? I suddenly wonder. No one as far as I know has ever suggested this before. Far from an anguished record of our brutal times, from death camp to nuclear bomb, are the flailings and gougings, the twisted limbs and half-obliterated heads a kind of paen to the further reaches of sadomaschochistic coupling? Is this an extended love song?
I practically had to gasp when I read this, as it seemed so true yet rarely said. It's the most natural thing in the world for figurative painters to paint their lovers and lust objects. No one would think of denying this of, say, Picasso or Gauguin. Yet Bacon's sexuality still feels weirdly closeted. His reputation extends well beyond some niche ghetto of gay s&m art. He's often, if not universally, regarded as one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century. So perhaps it's a little embarrassing for many to acknowledge that so much of his work depicts the extremes of a certain kind of love. Better to focus instead on themes which are allegedly more "universal."
In any case, Peppiatt himself is heterosexual and, it would appear, pretty vanilla in his proclivities. He accompanies Bacon to gala openings and drinking bouts with the beau-monde of the art world, but hears only rumors of the man's sexual adventures. I personally would have liked to read more about Bacon's cruising habits, how exactly he pursued the rough trade he so adored throughout his life.
But then of course this lacuna isn't really Peppiatt's fault. Bacon wanted it that way. While extremely effusive and open in some respects, he was also careful to cultivate secrecy and separation between the various aspects of his life. Our friends never let us into their lives completely.
*
The narrator tells the artists he'd going to be a father and the artist, by then a very old man, reacts thus
And I hope... I just hope that if it's a monster or something, or even if the thing doesn't have all what's called its five fingers and all its five toes you'll just do it in and get rid of it. Do you see? Do you see what I mean? Just do it in and get rid of it altogether.
Here I think we find another great example of Francis Bacon as role model. Indeed I myself had a similar response when my brother announced he and his wife were having a baby.
March 25, 2016
Almost gave up on this one early because I wasn't sure I liked the tone, but I'm glad I stuck with it. The more I read the better it got; the longer I was in that world the more I liked being there. Basically a memoir based around his friendship with Bacon, their interactions over the years, flipping between London and Paris. Didn't need to be a bio to get a good feel for who Bacon was, the lifestyle he led, the circles he ran in. A nice little peek into the high-octane art world.
November 1, 2015
Michael Peppiatt's memoir of life with the great painter Francis Bacon is rich in alcohol and every expensive meal they ate. If Peppiatt added recipes to this book, it would have been one of the great cookbooks of all time. On the other hand, we have lives here that spent the greatest of all possible times. Depression is around the corner, but when you're drinking the finest alcoholic drinks and eating food like today will be your last, it is hard to feel sorry for the participants in Bacon's life. The one thing I love about Francis Bacon is his mystique. On one level, he's very obvious and seems to be easy to read, but the truth is that he's' quite a complex character.
Peppiatt's memoir or narrative mainly takes place in Soho London and Paris. One can't imagine Bacon existing in another city than those two. Bacon, is without a doubt, one of the great citizens of London. Who wouldn't want to spend time under his identity as a guide to the underworld of various expensive restaurants, nightclubs and numerous (often seedy) bars. In his world, painters as well as East-End gangsters show up, and is a heady mix of a sense of danger and having a great meal at the same time.
"Francis Bacon In Your Blood" is just as complex as its subject matter. Peppiatt is known for his excellent Bacon biography "Anatomy Of An Enigma." Of the two, the biography is the better book. The memoir here is almost like a sketch book of notes regarding the author's time with Bacon, which overall, was pretty intense. Bacon, I suspected, that once he liked you, one is forever in his circle till he either destroys you or fatten you up - and in no way or fashion could I have existed in his world - just on the drinking and eating of extremely rich foods. The fact that he lived to the of 80-something is remarkable, considering his drinking and eating habits. The excess of his life is fully exposed in Peppiatt's memoir, and what is interesting is how one can survive such a pleasurable nightmare.
Peppiatt does all the right things in his book, but I feel it needs a stronger editorial help. A lot of the stories are repeated by Bacon (as they were in real life), but not necessary in a book form. This is a huge book, and I think it would have been a better read if it was half its size. The only thing that I found interesting in Peppiatt, besides his closeness to his subject matter, is when he became an editor of "Art International." Mostly due to my interest in publishing. If he was going to write on anything else besides Bacon, I would have liked to read actually more about his publishing a magazine. The fact that Peppiatt is straight and compared to Bacon's other colorful friends, he doesn't come off that interesting. I'm not clear why Bacon found him so interesting enough to put him squarely in his world. Perhaps he needed someone that was sort of neutral in his life, so he can talk. Perhaps like one who confesses to a priest, he needed a listener who wouldn't have an attitude towards him. And in most cases, Peppiatt was a very good friend and listener to Bacon's rants, complaints, and his love for the 'dirty' life of Soho London and elsewhere.
Peppiatt's memoir or narrative mainly takes place in Soho London and Paris. One can't imagine Bacon existing in another city than those two. Bacon, is without a doubt, one of the great citizens of London. Who wouldn't want to spend time under his identity as a guide to the underworld of various expensive restaurants, nightclubs and numerous (often seedy) bars. In his world, painters as well as East-End gangsters show up, and is a heady mix of a sense of danger and having a great meal at the same time.
"Francis Bacon In Your Blood" is just as complex as its subject matter. Peppiatt is known for his excellent Bacon biography "Anatomy Of An Enigma." Of the two, the biography is the better book. The memoir here is almost like a sketch book of notes regarding the author's time with Bacon, which overall, was pretty intense. Bacon, I suspected, that once he liked you, one is forever in his circle till he either destroys you or fatten you up - and in no way or fashion could I have existed in his world - just on the drinking and eating of extremely rich foods. The fact that he lived to the of 80-something is remarkable, considering his drinking and eating habits. The excess of his life is fully exposed in Peppiatt's memoir, and what is interesting is how one can survive such a pleasurable nightmare.
Peppiatt does all the right things in his book, but I feel it needs a stronger editorial help. A lot of the stories are repeated by Bacon (as they were in real life), but not necessary in a book form. This is a huge book, and I think it would have been a better read if it was half its size. The only thing that I found interesting in Peppiatt, besides his closeness to his subject matter, is when he became an editor of "Art International." Mostly due to my interest in publishing. If he was going to write on anything else besides Bacon, I would have liked to read actually more about his publishing a magazine. The fact that Peppiatt is straight and compared to Bacon's other colorful friends, he doesn't come off that interesting. I'm not clear why Bacon found him so interesting enough to put him squarely in his world. Perhaps he needed someone that was sort of neutral in his life, so he can talk. Perhaps like one who confesses to a priest, he needed a listener who wouldn't have an attitude towards him. And in most cases, Peppiatt was a very good friend and listener to Bacon's rants, complaints, and his love for the 'dirty' life of Soho London and elsewhere.
October 7, 2015
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b066v39qDescription: Adrian Scarborough reads Michael Peppiatt's intimate and indiscreet account of his thirty-year friendship with the defining artist of our time.
Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in June 1963 in Soho's French House to request an interview for a student magazine. Bacon invited him to lunch, and over oysters and Chablis they began a friendship and a no-holds-barred conversation that would continue until Bacon's death in 1992.
The Soho photographer, John Deakin, who introduced the young student to the famous artist, called Peppiatt 'Bacon's Boswell'. And for decades, Peppiatt accompanied Bacon on his nightly round of prodigious drinking from grand hotel to louche club to casino, witnessing all aspects of Bacon's 'gilded gutter life', as well as meeting the likes of Lucian Freud, East End thugs, Andy Warhol and the Duke of Devonshire. He also frequently discussed painting with Bacon in his studio, where only the artist's closest friends were ever admitted.
Despite the chaos Bacon created around him Peppiatt managed to record scores of their conversations ranging over every aspect of life and art, love and death. And here he shows Bacon close-up, grand and petty, tender and treacherous by turn, and often quite unlike the myth that has grown up around him.
Episode 1/5: Under the Spell: the young ingenue Peppiatt is taken into Bacon's circle.
2/5: Bacon's Boswell: Peppiatt becomes Bacon's Boswell, and there is mischief in Morocco
3/5: The dregs are what I prefer: high and low-life in Paris.
4/5: Poor George: life, death and guilt
5/5: A Kind of Immortality: Peppiatt loses a 'father', and becomes a man.
Reader: Adrian Scarborough
Writer: Michael Peppiatt is an art historian, curator and writer. His 1996 biography of Francis Bacon was chosen as a 'Book of the Year' by the New York Times.
August 30, 2018
A memoir of Francis Bacon was always going to interest me, but this exceeded my expectations by a long way. I find the character of Bacon and his voice so fascinating and even addictive and this memoir by Peppiatt fully enters you into the world that Bacon inhabited. From the big drinking sessions in restaurants, drifting around Soho and into The Colony Room, i just couldn't get enough of the energy Bacon gave off. Along with those legendary food and wine sessions came interactions with a host of people including Sonia Orwell, George Dyer, Lucian Freud and such was the intimacy of it, I almost felt part of it.
When i was away from the book, I found myself thinking of Francis and the things he said, the book stuck with me wherever i went. I find Francis to be an inspiration and although his art was very dark at times and he obviously had his own demons, he lived life to the fullest and withheld nothing. I can only imagine what it must have been like to know this extraordinary man but such is the quality of this memoir, a good glimpse of it is shown.
The closing epilogue was powerful, friends and the good times shared now gone as the author stands around Francis's old studio on the rue de Birague, paying tribute to all the fascinating people he has encountered during his times with Francis.
Quoting Nietzsche throughout Francis states "There it is. Life is all we have and since the whole thing is meaningless, we might as well be as brilliant as we can."
When i was away from the book, I found myself thinking of Francis and the things he said, the book stuck with me wherever i went. I find Francis to be an inspiration and although his art was very dark at times and he obviously had his own demons, he lived life to the fullest and withheld nothing. I can only imagine what it must have been like to know this extraordinary man but such is the quality of this memoir, a good glimpse of it is shown.
The closing epilogue was powerful, friends and the good times shared now gone as the author stands around Francis's old studio on the rue de Birague, paying tribute to all the fascinating people he has encountered during his times with Francis.
Quoting Nietzsche throughout Francis states "There it is. Life is all we have and since the whole thing is meaningless, we might as well be as brilliant as we can."
August 28, 2015
From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Adrian Scarborough reads Michael Peppiatt's intimate and indiscreet account of his thirty-year friendship with the defining artist of our time.
Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in June 1963 in Soho's French House to request an interview for a student magazine. Bacon invited him to lunch, and over oysters and Chablis they began a friendship and a no-holds-barred conversation that would continue until Bacon's death in 1992.
The Soho photographer, John Deakin, who introduced the young student to the famous artist, called Peppiatt 'Bacon's Boswell'. And for decades, Peppiatt accompanied Bacon on his nightly round of prodigious drinking from grand hotel to louche club to casino, witnessing all aspects of Bacon's 'gilded gutter life', as well as meeting the likes of Lucian Freud, East End thugs, Andy Warhol and the Duke of Devonshire. He also frequently discussed painting with Bacon in his studio, where only the artist's closest friends were ever admitted.
Despite the chaos Bacon created around him Peppiatt managed to record scores of their conversations ranging over every aspect of life and art, love and death. And here he shows Bacon close-up, grand and petty, tender and treacherous by turn, and often quite unlike the myth that has grown up around him.
Reader: Adrian Scarborough
Writer: Michael Peppiatt is an art historian, curator and writer. His 1996 biography of Francis Bacon was chosen as a 'Book of the Year' by the New York Times.
Abridger: Richard Hamilton
Producer: Justine Willett.
Episode 1:
The young ingenue Peppiatt is taken into Bacon's circle.
Episode 2:
Peppiatt becomes Bacon's Boswell, and there is mischief in Morocco.
Episode 3:
High and low-life in Paris.
Episode 4:
Death, guilt and inspiration.
Episode 5:
Peppiatt loses a 'father', and becomes a man.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b066v39q
Adrian Scarborough reads Michael Peppiatt's intimate and indiscreet account of his thirty-year friendship with the defining artist of our time.
Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in June 1963 in Soho's French House to request an interview for a student magazine. Bacon invited him to lunch, and over oysters and Chablis they began a friendship and a no-holds-barred conversation that would continue until Bacon's death in 1992.
The Soho photographer, John Deakin, who introduced the young student to the famous artist, called Peppiatt 'Bacon's Boswell'. And for decades, Peppiatt accompanied Bacon on his nightly round of prodigious drinking from grand hotel to louche club to casino, witnessing all aspects of Bacon's 'gilded gutter life', as well as meeting the likes of Lucian Freud, East End thugs, Andy Warhol and the Duke of Devonshire. He also frequently discussed painting with Bacon in his studio, where only the artist's closest friends were ever admitted.
Despite the chaos Bacon created around him Peppiatt managed to record scores of their conversations ranging over every aspect of life and art, love and death. And here he shows Bacon close-up, grand and petty, tender and treacherous by turn, and often quite unlike the myth that has grown up around him.
Reader: Adrian Scarborough
Writer: Michael Peppiatt is an art historian, curator and writer. His 1996 biography of Francis Bacon was chosen as a 'Book of the Year' by the New York Times.
Abridger: Richard Hamilton
Producer: Justine Willett.
Episode 1:
The young ingenue Peppiatt is taken into Bacon's circle.
Episode 2:
Peppiatt becomes Bacon's Boswell, and there is mischief in Morocco.
Episode 3:
High and low-life in Paris.
Episode 4:
Death, guilt and inspiration.
Episode 5:
Peppiatt loses a 'father', and becomes a man.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b066v39q
October 27, 2015
If you are looking for a biography of Francis Bacon or a book discussing his paintings, may I suggest one of the OTHER books on Francis Bacon that Michael Peppiatt has written because THIS one is a memoir of Peppiatt's time (over a decade) he spent with the painter hanging out in restaurants, bars, parties, doing all sorts of drinking and whatnot.
Francis Bacon is probably one of my top 3 favorite painters of the 20th century. So already I figured I would like this book. What I did not count on was this being such a dishy memoir! Which, if you know me, you know I love dish. So I enjoyed this very much. It did tend to get a little repetitive, but I guess when you write a book about all the times you went out and got hammered with Francis Bacon it would tend to repeat on the same themes.
The only thing I was disappointed in was the lack of when things were happening. The book was set in three parts, so you would know kind of when things were happening. But while you were reading you never knew what year it was and I found that annoying.
So, if you're looking for something scholarly, pick a different book. Still and all, if you want a pull-no-punches, kind of gossipy book about one of the 20th century's greatest painters, get this and put it in your face.
Francis Bacon is probably one of my top 3 favorite painters of the 20th century. So already I figured I would like this book. What I did not count on was this being such a dishy memoir! Which, if you know me, you know I love dish. So I enjoyed this very much. It did tend to get a little repetitive, but I guess when you write a book about all the times you went out and got hammered with Francis Bacon it would tend to repeat on the same themes.
The only thing I was disappointed in was the lack of when things were happening. The book was set in three parts, so you would know kind of when things were happening. But while you were reading you never knew what year it was and I found that annoying.
So, if you're looking for something scholarly, pick a different book. Still and all, if you want a pull-no-punches, kind of gossipy book about one of the 20th century's greatest painters, get this and put it in your face.
May 8, 2020
I listened to the audio version of this, so don't know if I should be counting it towards my 2020 reading target. Having said that, the Audible version was narrated by the author, Michael Peppiatt, himself and it completely converted me to the benefits of (carefully selected) audio books. Peppiatt's prose and first person narration is astounding; absorbing, evocative and totally hypnotic. Hugely recommended.
January 3, 2016
Completely perfect
Want to read
August 19, 201519 AUG 2015 - recommended by Bettie. Thanks!
May 23, 2016
I really liked this book. It is well written and multifaceted. It's true that there is some repetition of things Francis Bacon said but I think he repeated them because he thought they were important and didn't want them to be forgotten by his faithful friend and biographer. He would also paint the same subject in multiple studies, another form of his repetition and underscoring of important ideas and images. There seemed to be a need for more ways than one to say the same thing. As I read, I would research his and other artists' work that was being referred to so that it was also a wonderful visual and even auditory journey. I have always loved Francis Bacon's paintings and certainly have seen his influence on my own work. It's fabulous to be privy to his everyday life. It is just unbelievable how this man who was a prodigious drinker was able to create the way the did. I found it horribly interesting that he said when he had a very bad hangover he worked well because he could only focus on one thought at a time. It was all he could do. Of course, that thought was to paint.
"...Because we come from nothing and go to nothing, and in between there's only the brilliance of life, even it means nothing." (FB After Nietzsche) 13/357
I want a deeply ordered image, you see, but I want it to come about by chance. You always hope that the paint will do more for you, but mostly it's like painting a wall when the very first brushstroke you do gives a sudden shock of reality that is cancelled out as you paint the whole surface. FB 30
What what wants in art nowadays is a shorthand where the sensation comes across right away. FB 30
"D'you you know I think one thing about artists... is that they remain much more constant to their childhood sensations. Other people often change completely, but artists tend to stay much the way they've always been." FB 34
"When I was very young I found this marvellous translation of Aeschylus...It had these images in it I thought so beautiful they've been with me ever since. "The reek of human blood smiles out at me" was one. Then there was this other one I can't quite remember about Clytemnestra sitting over her sorrow like a hen. They are superbly visual. I feel myself very close to the world of Greek tragedy...often, in my painting, I have this sensation of following a long call from antiquity. FB 48
There's a café I pass every day that's full of people gesticulating wildly, which I avoid because I imagine the noise inside must be overwhelming. Then I go in one afternoon out of curiosity and am astonished to find it's completely silent because the city's deaf-mutes all congregate here to communicate in sign language. FB 78
When he tells me that he first thought he wanted to be a poet then realized deep down he wanted to be a poem, I know I want to go on seeing him. FB 79
"I'm only trying to deform into truth," Francis says. "After all, photography has done so much, so how are you to make a portrait nowadays unless you can bring what's called the facts of someone's appearance more directly and more violently back on to the nervous system? You have to deform the image. There it is. If I didn't have to live, I wouldn't let any of this out. 85
Yet it's not a mess, it's an extraordinary, visually riveting creation. (Bacon's studio) Anywhere you look you could scoop up an armload of fascinating images..You could scuffle to and fro throwing up new images, other strata, all the time because this carpet of heads and limbs and bodies, some killed, some with terrible wounds, is at least ankle deep. And I guess that's exactly what Francis does as he walks up to his painting and back as he works, constantly kicking up new combinations, new visual suggestions, "triggers of ideas", as he calls them...paint the real hero of the room over which it has established its dominion.
"Well, there it is," Francis says, "I live in this kind of squalor. But it's useful. This is my compost, It's the compost out of which my paintings come. Fifty years from now, people will see how simple the distortions I make really are... I've deliberately simplified myself. I'm simply complicated." 86
..."It's just the same in painting. So much has already been done and then photography has cancelled out so many other possibilities. When I started painting I needed extreme subject matter. And then I found my subjects through my life... I mean one's work is really a kind of diary or an autobiography." FB 88
...does Francis nurture it because he knows the deeper the guilt the more potent the images will be? 93
I'm not trying to say anything in particular in my work. I'm simply trying to convey my sensations about existence at the deepest level I can...people live behind screens... And perhaps, every now and then, my paintings record life and the way things are when some of those screens have been cleared away. FB 111
"Painting has had so many possibilities cancelled out by photography that it's more and more a question of trying to deepen the game through instinct and chance." FB 116
"I've been very lucky to make a living out of something that obsesses me." FB 135
Somehow you have to get the paint down in such a curious way that it comes back on to the nervous system more exactly and profoundly. If this image is going to be worth making at all, you see, it has to unlock sensation at a deeper level. Otherwise a photograph can so the whole thing much better. FB 138
My impression is that you're working way outside photography while actually absorbing a lot of its techniques," I (MP) say, "a bit the way photography did when it first appeared and had to appropriate so much from painting." 138
I only want the sensation without the boredom of its conveyance...I've always believed that great art comes out of reinventing what's called fact, what we know of our existence - a reconcentration that tears away the veils that fact, or truth acquires over time.... To have something like the whole sea at the end of a kind of box you could look into. So small and yet to have the whole sea in it. FB 139
There are only a few great works where technique and subject are so closely interlocked that you can't separate one from the other...FB 148
I think Degas' pastels are among the greatest things ever made. FB149
"What I do may be a lie, but it conveys reality more accurately." That's a very complex thing. After all, it's not so-called realist painters who manage to convey reality best." FB 149
(Painting 1946) I myself quite like it because it has something really artificial about it, and I think all art that's worth looking at is deeply artificial...Art itself is an artifice. It's an illusion, and if an image is going to work it has to be reinvented artificially... Reality has to be reinvented to convey the intensity of the real. FB 151
After all, most people are neither one thing or another. (Homo-heterosexual). They're just waiting for something to happen to them. FB 157
There's nothing you can do about death. Death exists only for the living. FB 164
"If they were sitting in front of me, they would inhibit me and I couldn't practise on them the injury I inflict on my work. I like to be alone with the way I remember them. And I hope to bring them back more poignantly and violently." FB 165
Art's above all a question of going too far. FB 191
..."as I've got older, I have to say, I think less and less about happiness, because my interest has grown much more for my work than my life." FB 255
"Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends,". FB 316
"You've only got to look in the shop windows to see there's nothing left anymore. It's like Munich. You can feel a disaster's coming just by looking in the shop's windows. FB 326
It's Francis himself who exists in circular time, drawing me into it by the power of his presence. In this particular moment all the tenses have been laid out side by side. The sensation is all encompassing, as though one had stepped into a parallel universe, and for a long time it made me intensely anxious, as if I were under the influence of an unknown drug. 327
Something in Francis himself reached back to the ancient mysteries, like the Sphinx or the Oracle of Delphi, reverberating across the centuries with their enigma intact...His work poses the most searching questions about existence, questions that are asked from one civilization to the next because no lasting answer is found. Why is man created, alone among the animals on earth, in the acute consciousness of his mortality? Should we not assume our animality, display our passions and contradictions without shame - openly pant, roar and scream? What meaning, if there is a meaning at all, can we attribute to our brief span? Francis incorporated the tensions of being human into the very grain of his paint. Examined close up, the swirling impasto appears encoded with specific evidence, specific human traces that continue to rehearse and echo our fraught existence. That is perhaps the underlying reason why his figures, spun out of this infinitely suggestive stuff, come across as a concentrate of all the impulses and confusions of our flesh, unresolved and shockingly alive. 337
"...Because we come from nothing and go to nothing, and in between there's only the brilliance of life, even it means nothing." (FB After Nietzsche) 13/357
I want a deeply ordered image, you see, but I want it to come about by chance. You always hope that the paint will do more for you, but mostly it's like painting a wall when the very first brushstroke you do gives a sudden shock of reality that is cancelled out as you paint the whole surface. FB 30
What what wants in art nowadays is a shorthand where the sensation comes across right away. FB 30
"D'you you know I think one thing about artists... is that they remain much more constant to their childhood sensations. Other people often change completely, but artists tend to stay much the way they've always been." FB 34
"When I was very young I found this marvellous translation of Aeschylus...It had these images in it I thought so beautiful they've been with me ever since. "The reek of human blood smiles out at me" was one. Then there was this other one I can't quite remember about Clytemnestra sitting over her sorrow like a hen. They are superbly visual. I feel myself very close to the world of Greek tragedy...often, in my painting, I have this sensation of following a long call from antiquity. FB 48
There's a café I pass every day that's full of people gesticulating wildly, which I avoid because I imagine the noise inside must be overwhelming. Then I go in one afternoon out of curiosity and am astonished to find it's completely silent because the city's deaf-mutes all congregate here to communicate in sign language. FB 78
When he tells me that he first thought he wanted to be a poet then realized deep down he wanted to be a poem, I know I want to go on seeing him. FB 79
"I'm only trying to deform into truth," Francis says. "After all, photography has done so much, so how are you to make a portrait nowadays unless you can bring what's called the facts of someone's appearance more directly and more violently back on to the nervous system? You have to deform the image. There it is. If I didn't have to live, I wouldn't let any of this out. 85
Yet it's not a mess, it's an extraordinary, visually riveting creation. (Bacon's studio) Anywhere you look you could scoop up an armload of fascinating images..You could scuffle to and fro throwing up new images, other strata, all the time because this carpet of heads and limbs and bodies, some killed, some with terrible wounds, is at least ankle deep. And I guess that's exactly what Francis does as he walks up to his painting and back as he works, constantly kicking up new combinations, new visual suggestions, "triggers of ideas", as he calls them...paint the real hero of the room over which it has established its dominion.
"Well, there it is," Francis says, "I live in this kind of squalor. But it's useful. This is my compost, It's the compost out of which my paintings come. Fifty years from now, people will see how simple the distortions I make really are... I've deliberately simplified myself. I'm simply complicated." 86
..."It's just the same in painting. So much has already been done and then photography has cancelled out so many other possibilities. When I started painting I needed extreme subject matter. And then I found my subjects through my life... I mean one's work is really a kind of diary or an autobiography." FB 88
...does Francis nurture it because he knows the deeper the guilt the more potent the images will be? 93
I'm not trying to say anything in particular in my work. I'm simply trying to convey my sensations about existence at the deepest level I can...people live behind screens... And perhaps, every now and then, my paintings record life and the way things are when some of those screens have been cleared away. FB 111
"Painting has had so many possibilities cancelled out by photography that it's more and more a question of trying to deepen the game through instinct and chance." FB 116
"I've been very lucky to make a living out of something that obsesses me." FB 135
Somehow you have to get the paint down in such a curious way that it comes back on to the nervous system more exactly and profoundly. If this image is going to be worth making at all, you see, it has to unlock sensation at a deeper level. Otherwise a photograph can so the whole thing much better. FB 138
My impression is that you're working way outside photography while actually absorbing a lot of its techniques," I (MP) say, "a bit the way photography did when it first appeared and had to appropriate so much from painting." 138
I only want the sensation without the boredom of its conveyance...I've always believed that great art comes out of reinventing what's called fact, what we know of our existence - a reconcentration that tears away the veils that fact, or truth acquires over time.... To have something like the whole sea at the end of a kind of box you could look into. So small and yet to have the whole sea in it. FB 139
There are only a few great works where technique and subject are so closely interlocked that you can't separate one from the other...FB 148
I think Degas' pastels are among the greatest things ever made. FB149
"What I do may be a lie, but it conveys reality more accurately." That's a very complex thing. After all, it's not so-called realist painters who manage to convey reality best." FB 149
(Painting 1946) I myself quite like it because it has something really artificial about it, and I think all art that's worth looking at is deeply artificial...Art itself is an artifice. It's an illusion, and if an image is going to work it has to be reinvented artificially... Reality has to be reinvented to convey the intensity of the real. FB 151
After all, most people are neither one thing or another. (Homo-heterosexual). They're just waiting for something to happen to them. FB 157
There's nothing you can do about death. Death exists only for the living. FB 164
"If they were sitting in front of me, they would inhibit me and I couldn't practise on them the injury I inflict on my work. I like to be alone with the way I remember them. And I hope to bring them back more poignantly and violently." FB 165
Art's above all a question of going too far. FB 191
..."as I've got older, I have to say, I think less and less about happiness, because my interest has grown much more for my work than my life." FB 255
"Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends,". FB 316
"You've only got to look in the shop windows to see there's nothing left anymore. It's like Munich. You can feel a disaster's coming just by looking in the shop's windows. FB 326
It's Francis himself who exists in circular time, drawing me into it by the power of his presence. In this particular moment all the tenses have been laid out side by side. The sensation is all encompassing, as though one had stepped into a parallel universe, and for a long time it made me intensely anxious, as if I were under the influence of an unknown drug. 327
Something in Francis himself reached back to the ancient mysteries, like the Sphinx or the Oracle of Delphi, reverberating across the centuries with their enigma intact...His work poses the most searching questions about existence, questions that are asked from one civilization to the next because no lasting answer is found. Why is man created, alone among the animals on earth, in the acute consciousness of his mortality? Should we not assume our animality, display our passions and contradictions without shame - openly pant, roar and scream? What meaning, if there is a meaning at all, can we attribute to our brief span? Francis incorporated the tensions of being human into the very grain of his paint. Examined close up, the swirling impasto appears encoded with specific evidence, specific human traces that continue to rehearse and echo our fraught existence. That is perhaps the underlying reason why his figures, spun out of this infinitely suggestive stuff, come across as a concentrate of all the impulses and confusions of our flesh, unresolved and shockingly alive. 337
February 8, 2023
All that is needed to know about Peppiatt is when he recalls going to get a preview of Bacon's new work in the late 1960's and his reaction is that if had known how violent and horrific Bacon's paintings were, he would never had courted Bacon for an interview in the first place. The next day at lunch with Bacon at Claridge's he tells Bacon how marvellous the paintings were but perhaps he could explain them.
I had read Bacon: Anantomy of an Enigma and this portrait is incredibly disappointing. The biggest problem is that you are expected to believe that Peppiatt can recall verbatim all the conversations had after many hours of drinking some forty years later. I gave up all belief when he gets to Tangier, and after an all night bender on drugs and alcohol he can still write almost three pages of Bacon conversation - really???
Further there is SO muc repetition. The other major problem is that Peppiatt himself is not that interesting, and the writing can't make up for that.
For Bacon lovers only.
I had read Bacon: Anantomy of an Enigma and this portrait is incredibly disappointing. The biggest problem is that you are expected to believe that Peppiatt can recall verbatim all the conversations had after many hours of drinking some forty years later. I gave up all belief when he gets to Tangier, and after an all night bender on drugs and alcohol he can still write almost three pages of Bacon conversation - really???
Further there is SO muc repetition. The other major problem is that Peppiatt himself is not that interesting, and the writing can't make up for that.
For Bacon lovers only.
May 17, 2016
If you picked up Michael Peppiatt's book looking for a biography of Bacon, you're going to be disappointed. Yes, there are plenty of facts here. But no, Bacon-biog isn't the point. This is a book about Peppiatt, himself. Actually, it's more of a Venn diagram about how the writer's life intersects with Bacon, though I must admit I am picturing such a diagram being loosely sketched on canvas by Francis himself, using the bin lid he kept for such circumference-related purposes.
To be fair, this book isn't sold as an artist biography. Peppiatt has already written one of those, the well-received Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma. This is his own story, which is intriguing enough, given that aside from his Bacon connection (inescapable as may be), the author is a writer of note in the art world, having run Art International for a number of years, and managed to piss off MOMA with a bad review to such an extent that legal action seemed terrifyingly likely. (As someone who's been involved in similar things, I must say the feeling of pants-shitting dread is exceptionally well captured here.)
But before all this, there's just a young bloke, seeking an interview with an artist, for a student publication. And that young bloke is taken under the Bacon wing for the next thirty years, and made privy to the artist's thoughts and works in progress, with the aid of frankly terrifying amounts of alcohol and oysters.
(Seriously, the reason this book will never inspire a drinking game is because it would kill you. Yes, even you Withnail & I survivors. )
What happens in the work is that we're given a Bacon freed from the strictures of biography. There's dates, sure, because without chronology the story would collapse into a morass of boozy recollection. But it's a more impressionistic version of events. It's almost like the smears, the distortions on the artists's work. We see Bacon as a player in the life of another, instead of the star of his own tale, as one would find in Daniel Farson's book, say, or in David Sylvester's book of interviews. There's a candid feeling to the work here, and while I knew nothing much of Peppiatt before I began to read, I followed his journeys between London and Paris (let's face it, who's not a sucker for the Marais?) and his shoulder-rubbings with his heroes with interest.
This book exist as Peppiatt took to writing down Bacon's words after nights out. Helpfully, when in his cups, the artist frequently restated himself, thus searing his gilded gutter pronouncements into the author's brain, eventually providing enough typed pages for a book, decades later, that was first approved and then sunk by Bacon, for fear of offending the living. But it's the way the Soho inhabitants and Bacon hangers-on live in these pages that make the work so appealing: Bacon's rough trade lover George is adroitly captured with East End patois. And here, more than anywhere else I've read, is the tongue of Muriel Belcher, mistress of the Colony Room, given wonderful attention.
There's a certain element of self-aggrandisement at work here. Peppiatt refers to himself as Bacon's Boswell at times, and I must admit I cringed. I think he's more on the money when he discusses the difference between the father-figure of Francis and his own, bipolar father. There's very much a sense of a man looking for a father, and this clearly comes across in the interactions between the two, though it does seem strange considering Bacon as paternal rather than wildly avuncular.
I found there was a bit of weird musing over homosexuality in the work, and Peppiatt seems kind of appalled at times by the prospect, which seems odd given that he moved in the world of Polari and gay men, closeted or otherwise. It's not judgemental, for the most part, and seems to have been edited to below the surface, but I did find pretty weak the author's belief that Francis was pissed at him for having a child because it took him into some kind of hetrosexual zone the artist couldn't enter. Fuh?
Regardless of these qualms, this is a book any fancier of Bacon should read. It's a handy adjunct to Peppiatt's proper biography of the artist, and is filthier and more rough-and-ready. (You'll probably learn more about Bacon and creampies than you ever needed to.) But it's loving, and does not seem to be disrespectful or cheap mining of memory: this is a tribute to a friend, a pugnacious father and a heroic piss-artist, and it's good fun.
To be fair, this book isn't sold as an artist biography. Peppiatt has already written one of those, the well-received Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma. This is his own story, which is intriguing enough, given that aside from his Bacon connection (inescapable as may be), the author is a writer of note in the art world, having run Art International for a number of years, and managed to piss off MOMA with a bad review to such an extent that legal action seemed terrifyingly likely. (As someone who's been involved in similar things, I must say the feeling of pants-shitting dread is exceptionally well captured here.)
But before all this, there's just a young bloke, seeking an interview with an artist, for a student publication. And that young bloke is taken under the Bacon wing for the next thirty years, and made privy to the artist's thoughts and works in progress, with the aid of frankly terrifying amounts of alcohol and oysters.
(Seriously, the reason this book will never inspire a drinking game is because it would kill you. Yes, even you Withnail & I survivors. )
What happens in the work is that we're given a Bacon freed from the strictures of biography. There's dates, sure, because without chronology the story would collapse into a morass of boozy recollection. But it's a more impressionistic version of events. It's almost like the smears, the distortions on the artists's work. We see Bacon as a player in the life of another, instead of the star of his own tale, as one would find in Daniel Farson's book, say, or in David Sylvester's book of interviews. There's a candid feeling to the work here, and while I knew nothing much of Peppiatt before I began to read, I followed his journeys between London and Paris (let's face it, who's not a sucker for the Marais?) and his shoulder-rubbings with his heroes with interest.
This book exist as Peppiatt took to writing down Bacon's words after nights out. Helpfully, when in his cups, the artist frequently restated himself, thus searing his gilded gutter pronouncements into the author's brain, eventually providing enough typed pages for a book, decades later, that was first approved and then sunk by Bacon, for fear of offending the living. But it's the way the Soho inhabitants and Bacon hangers-on live in these pages that make the work so appealing: Bacon's rough trade lover George is adroitly captured with East End patois. And here, more than anywhere else I've read, is the tongue of Muriel Belcher, mistress of the Colony Room, given wonderful attention.
From her corner stool, Muriel leans over and taps Francis sharply on the arm.There's been hints in other Bacon books, but the full flight Muriel has only been captured here, I feel. Also interesting was the way Sonia Orwell was portrayed - terminally unhappy, yet grudgingly accepting of Peppiatt, given time. Indeed, the description of Orwell lambasting Bacon after George's suicide was brilliant - an anger I'd never heard voiced in other texts. Between Belcher and Orwell, there's more depth given to the high and low times of Bacon's life, even if he's not, technically, the subject of the work.
'You're not a superstar,' she says rapidly. 'You're just a cunt, dear.'
'Well I suppose I am,' Francis concedes, almost gratefully. 'If you say so.'
'Who's a cunt now?' queries an adjacent drinker, swinging his grey face up from a long brood and pushing back a lank of lifeless hair.
'The big one's been calling him a superstar, dear,' Muriel explains kindly 'so I said he's not a superstar he's just a cunt. You didn't think I was talking about you you silly old ballock, did you, dear?'
There's a certain element of self-aggrandisement at work here. Peppiatt refers to himself as Bacon's Boswell at times, and I must admit I cringed. I think he's more on the money when he discusses the difference between the father-figure of Francis and his own, bipolar father. There's very much a sense of a man looking for a father, and this clearly comes across in the interactions between the two, though it does seem strange considering Bacon as paternal rather than wildly avuncular.
I found there was a bit of weird musing over homosexuality in the work, and Peppiatt seems kind of appalled at times by the prospect, which seems odd given that he moved in the world of Polari and gay men, closeted or otherwise. It's not judgemental, for the most part, and seems to have been edited to below the surface, but I did find pretty weak the author's belief that Francis was pissed at him for having a child because it took him into some kind of hetrosexual zone the artist couldn't enter. Fuh?
Regardless of these qualms, this is a book any fancier of Bacon should read. It's a handy adjunct to Peppiatt's proper biography of the artist, and is filthier and more rough-and-ready. (You'll probably learn more about Bacon and creampies than you ever needed to.) But it's loving, and does not seem to be disrespectful or cheap mining of memory: this is a tribute to a friend, a pugnacious father and a heroic piss-artist, and it's good fun.
April 1, 2021
Fascinating insight into the lives of Peppiatt and Bacon and the circles they moved in. A glimpse into another world.
December 19, 2015
A memoir about hanging out with an iconic artist that manages to be both fascinating and banal at the same time.
Peppiatt lucked into a friendship with the painter Francis Bacon while the former was a student at Cambridge. Having decided on a whim to do an art issue of the school paper, Peppiatt finagles an introduction to Bacon and hits the jackpot: Bacon has a habit of adding random people to his entourage, and takes a liking to Peppiatt. Thus was a contemporary Johnson/Boswell relationship born, though this one is fueled by several hundred thousand gallons of alcohol.
Not much happens in this book. The main action is the author hanging out with Francis Bacon in bars, restaurants, and clubs, drinking ridiculous amounts of booze and talking about art. Depending on how fascinating you find this, you will either love or hate this book. We also get the coming-of-age elements of Peppiatt's early adulthood, and how he struggles to form an identity independent of Bacon. He succeeds, and yet, at the same time, utterly fails. He's not complaining, mind you. One could do worse than become known as an infamous painter's biographer buddy; and yet, Peppiatt is remarkably self-effacing about what he DID accomplish, namely reviving Art International magazine and becoming an influential art critic.
The memoir is at its best when it's actually talking about Bacon's art. There are no photographs, but the descriptions of the works are so vivid that, if you're not already familiar with them, you can't help but dash to the web or the library/bookstore to look up them up and see. The book is set mostly in London and Paris, epicenters of the art world, and so there are a lot of openings, one-man shows, and retrospectives. Peppiatt is even self-aware enough to realize how repetitive Bacon can be, and specifically calls it out, though he refers to it as an elegant pattern/leitmotif.
I honestly don't know. I liked this enough to finish it, and I'm really happy to have learned more about art, which I'm still not as conversant in as I'd like. I think, however, I will probably enjoy the biography Peppiatt wrote, and/or the Bacon catalogs I'll be able to peruse, more than this long, meandering recollection of what it's like to hang out with the rich and famous. A curious book for curious people, one I'd love to discuss with you if you try it yourself.
Peppiatt lucked into a friendship with the painter Francis Bacon while the former was a student at Cambridge. Having decided on a whim to do an art issue of the school paper, Peppiatt finagles an introduction to Bacon and hits the jackpot: Bacon has a habit of adding random people to his entourage, and takes a liking to Peppiatt. Thus was a contemporary Johnson/Boswell relationship born, though this one is fueled by several hundred thousand gallons of alcohol.
Not much happens in this book. The main action is the author hanging out with Francis Bacon in bars, restaurants, and clubs, drinking ridiculous amounts of booze and talking about art. Depending on how fascinating you find this, you will either love or hate this book. We also get the coming-of-age elements of Peppiatt's early adulthood, and how he struggles to form an identity independent of Bacon. He succeeds, and yet, at the same time, utterly fails. He's not complaining, mind you. One could do worse than become known as an infamous painter's biographer buddy; and yet, Peppiatt is remarkably self-effacing about what he DID accomplish, namely reviving Art International magazine and becoming an influential art critic.
The memoir is at its best when it's actually talking about Bacon's art. There are no photographs, but the descriptions of the works are so vivid that, if you're not already familiar with them, you can't help but dash to the web or the library/bookstore to look up them up and see. The book is set mostly in London and Paris, epicenters of the art world, and so there are a lot of openings, one-man shows, and retrospectives. Peppiatt is even self-aware enough to realize how repetitive Bacon can be, and specifically calls it out, though he refers to it as an elegant pattern/leitmotif.
I honestly don't know. I liked this enough to finish it, and I'm really happy to have learned more about art, which I'm still not as conversant in as I'd like. I think, however, I will probably enjoy the biography Peppiatt wrote, and/or the Bacon catalogs I'll be able to peruse, more than this long, meandering recollection of what it's like to hang out with the rich and famous. A curious book for curious people, one I'd love to discuss with you if you try it yourself.
November 28, 2016
As an expat, this book made me yearn for Soho and all of its salubrious delights!
Peppiatt draws you into the world of expensive restaurants, exclusive hotels and seemingly endless bottles of champagne in much the same way he himself was absorbed into Bacons inner circle.
Rather than a memoir, this book feels like sitting with an old friend while they (sometimes indiscreetly) tell you of their adventures over a few bottles one night.
Intimate and informative, I didn't want the night to end.
Peppiatt draws you into the world of expensive restaurants, exclusive hotels and seemingly endless bottles of champagne in much the same way he himself was absorbed into Bacons inner circle.
Rather than a memoir, this book feels like sitting with an old friend while they (sometimes indiscreetly) tell you of their adventures over a few bottles one night.
Intimate and informative, I didn't want the night to end.
February 20, 2021
This book manages to be something I've never seen before, and in that sense it is great.
It is a book written by a member of the subject's entourage, groomed over decades for the role of biographer. Francis Bacon is richly and intimately presented as the kind of self-conscious and dominating personality capable of that kind of control and ambition. There's real beauty and poetry in the way Peppiatt weaves dense layer upon layer of Bacon's repetitions. They aren't embarrassing accidents in Bacon's mouth or Peppiatt's accounting of them, but intentional thematic emphases in the depiction of a man who said (many times), "I am the most artificial man you'll ever meet."
The first plunge into the dense, smoky, Soho nightlife of this book is jarring because of how immediate and intimate the conversation and relationships are. "Is this a biography? Is this more like a biographical screenplay?" But over time, with admirable and patient writing, the special circumstances that allowed for such confident, close reporting, are convincingly illustrated. Peppiatt is adopted as a puppy by a brilliant man consistently jealous of his image and legacy. Bacon spends every night feeding hangers-on feasts, champagne, and ever more polished quips and stories. He requires that, in return, they remain with a feeling of indebtedness.
Peppiatt is largely self-aware of his lifetime role as indebted. He eats the man's food, drinks the man's champagne, takes the man's (sometimes substantial and life-changing) handouts, and banks on the man's connections. This self-awareness is very much in harmony with Bacon's attitude on life and the way he lived, and the complement elevates the biography. However, it doubles the mess of the bitter end of Bacon's life. The mountain of privilege that has built over the course of the book/Peppiatt's life as Bacon's mentee eclipses his self-awareness for want of the moral substance others earn through real life.
But more than Bacon's material gifts, Peppiatt consumed the essence of the artist, at first naturally, easily, and unconsciously as a young man, then with greater purpose. Peppiatt has made an art of presenting Francis Bacon in a way that feels as raw, artificial, and intimate as his paintings; that makes you see the paintings anew. That is something special. That is definitely worth reading.
It is a book written by a member of the subject's entourage, groomed over decades for the role of biographer. Francis Bacon is richly and intimately presented as the kind of self-conscious and dominating personality capable of that kind of control and ambition. There's real beauty and poetry in the way Peppiatt weaves dense layer upon layer of Bacon's repetitions. They aren't embarrassing accidents in Bacon's mouth or Peppiatt's accounting of them, but intentional thematic emphases in the depiction of a man who said (many times), "I am the most artificial man you'll ever meet."
The first plunge into the dense, smoky, Soho nightlife of this book is jarring because of how immediate and intimate the conversation and relationships are. "Is this a biography? Is this more like a biographical screenplay?" But over time, with admirable and patient writing, the special circumstances that allowed for such confident, close reporting, are convincingly illustrated. Peppiatt is adopted as a puppy by a brilliant man consistently jealous of his image and legacy. Bacon spends every night feeding hangers-on feasts, champagne, and ever more polished quips and stories. He requires that, in return, they remain with a feeling of indebtedness.
Peppiatt is largely self-aware of his lifetime role as indebted. He eats the man's food, drinks the man's champagne, takes the man's (sometimes substantial and life-changing) handouts, and banks on the man's connections. This self-awareness is very much in harmony with Bacon's attitude on life and the way he lived, and the complement elevates the biography. However, it doubles the mess of the bitter end of Bacon's life. The mountain of privilege that has built over the course of the book/Peppiatt's life as Bacon's mentee eclipses his self-awareness for want of the moral substance others earn through real life.
But more than Bacon's material gifts, Peppiatt consumed the essence of the artist, at first naturally, easily, and unconsciously as a young man, then with greater purpose. Peppiatt has made an art of presenting Francis Bacon in a way that feels as raw, artificial, and intimate as his paintings; that makes you see the paintings anew. That is something special. That is definitely worth reading.
August 14, 2021
After reading Max Porter's horror show effort (The Death of Francis Bacon), which I am certain FB would have sued over, I was very keen to read this. The fact I read Porter's first was an unfounded leap of faith. Michael Peppiatt's book captures so much of the time and shines a bright light on what an artist is and can be like. The insecurities, the generosity and mean spiritedness, the spite, venom and petty jealousies, the gossip and the sense of being an outsider. He gets Bacon's voice completely although he has still been very generous and cleaned it up a bit. The late meal at Claridges (p373) is classic delivery being both disgustingly honest and blunt in a throwaway comment.
I realise this could never have been published when Francis was alive. Having been witness to his public performances with and over young men while Farmer John, as he was cruelly called in Soho, stood by showed the range of power and excess Bacon relished over others; and how he enthralled anyone in his orbit by swallowing them and spitting them out. I sensed his loyalty though and enjoyed Michael Peppiatt's deft and honest accounts of the circularity of Bacon's merry go round jacknory telling of his mythologies.
I have relished being dragged back around Soho. Revisiting The Colony Room, where I encountered FB, Ian and the young Scottish prodigy being promoted and flouted infant of me. The insider tales of OTT indulgence only make Bacon's myth larger than any life.
I loved the tone of the book, the way time unfolded, how Michael Peppiatt managed to weave his own narrative and ultimate self-assertion from such an all powerful force.That is very sensitively handled. It's one of those books you feel sad at finishing. As is oft stated within its covers there is no end, only now.
Thank you for such an enthralling (and safe) voyeuristic glimpse beyond the now ever clouding myth of Francis Bacon. Very soon there will be a folk singer writing soppy songs about how misunderstood Francis was :) He revelled in being an outspoken bitch and surrounded himself with a gang of vipers, who could and did destroy an unsuspecting fan or innocent across a bar room table.
Here is my own tiny homage of the latter period of late eighties SOHO London
https://jeremy-blank.blogspot.com/198...
I realise this could never have been published when Francis was alive. Having been witness to his public performances with and over young men while Farmer John, as he was cruelly called in Soho, stood by showed the range of power and excess Bacon relished over others; and how he enthralled anyone in his orbit by swallowing them and spitting them out. I sensed his loyalty though and enjoyed Michael Peppiatt's deft and honest accounts of the circularity of Bacon's merry go round jacknory telling of his mythologies.
I have relished being dragged back around Soho. Revisiting The Colony Room, where I encountered FB, Ian and the young Scottish prodigy being promoted and flouted infant of me. The insider tales of OTT indulgence only make Bacon's myth larger than any life.
I loved the tone of the book, the way time unfolded, how Michael Peppiatt managed to weave his own narrative and ultimate self-assertion from such an all powerful force.That is very sensitively handled. It's one of those books you feel sad at finishing. As is oft stated within its covers there is no end, only now.
Thank you for such an enthralling (and safe) voyeuristic glimpse beyond the now ever clouding myth of Francis Bacon. Very soon there will be a folk singer writing soppy songs about how misunderstood Francis was :) He revelled in being an outspoken bitch and surrounded himself with a gang of vipers, who could and did destroy an unsuspecting fan or innocent across a bar room table.
Here is my own tiny homage of the latter period of late eighties SOHO London
https://jeremy-blank.blogspot.com/198...
May 28, 2019
When I stumbled upon this book, I actually thought Francis Bacon had been an actor or somewhat related to the film industry.
Reading the back cover, I then found out that the book was about the author's longtime friendship to the ARTIST Francis Bacon.
I plunged into this amazing memoir, and started looking up some facts about Francis Bacon and Michael Peppiatt on the internet.
Francis Bacon had actually been an iconic figurative painter, creating around 584 painting until his death in April 1992. Still, I had no idea what kind of artist a figurative artist is, nor what kind of myth they were talking about, so I checked some more details and had at closer look at some of Bacon's masterpieces.
I'm not going into details whether this art speaks to me or not, but instead I'm telling you how much I appreciated Peppiatt's book.
Though I had no idea what to expect, I soon realised I would love this book, first because their lives mainly played in Paris and London, two cities I love, and secondly it was not only one person's memoir, but a retelling of two lives and how they intersected over the years.
It's a awesome recollection of a unique but also a bit bizarre friendship between a young writer and an experiences renown painter, that lasted nearly three decades. Peppiatt, and being a fascinated and intimate member of the inner circle of Bacon's friends, retells by this memoir what a memorable yet mysterious, predictable, sometimes wayward person Francis Bacon must have been.
Decadence, clubs, extensive dinners followed by more excessive drinking, art, journalism, writing, friendships and love affairs, these are only some of the main words to describe this fascinating multifaceted memoir.
Find more on my blog: www.awesomefamilyblog.com
Reading the back cover, I then found out that the book was about the author's longtime friendship to the ARTIST Francis Bacon.
I plunged into this amazing memoir, and started looking up some facts about Francis Bacon and Michael Peppiatt on the internet.
Francis Bacon had actually been an iconic figurative painter, creating around 584 painting until his death in April 1992. Still, I had no idea what kind of artist a figurative artist is, nor what kind of myth they were talking about, so I checked some more details and had at closer look at some of Bacon's masterpieces.
I'm not going into details whether this art speaks to me or not, but instead I'm telling you how much I appreciated Peppiatt's book.
Though I had no idea what to expect, I soon realised I would love this book, first because their lives mainly played in Paris and London, two cities I love, and secondly it was not only one person's memoir, but a retelling of two lives and how they intersected over the years.
It's a awesome recollection of a unique but also a bit bizarre friendship between a young writer and an experiences renown painter, that lasted nearly three decades. Peppiatt, and being a fascinated and intimate member of the inner circle of Bacon's friends, retells by this memoir what a memorable yet mysterious, predictable, sometimes wayward person Francis Bacon must have been.
Decadence, clubs, extensive dinners followed by more excessive drinking, art, journalism, writing, friendships and love affairs, these are only some of the main words to describe this fascinating multifaceted memoir.
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August 18, 2021
Bacon in Your Blood is the rollicking boozy memoir of then-student Michael Peppiatt’s encounter with the painter Francis Bacon for an interview for publication in a student-run art magazine in the early 1960s. This first encounter jumpstarted a tumultuous thirty-year relationship between perennially poor, straight Peppiatt and the wealthy gay Bacon, which Peppiatt chronicles with a droll British wit. Bacon’s carousing and storytelling and contrariness are endlessly entertaining, even when he spins the same story three times or more with only subtle variation. Tension—sexual and otherwise—arise sporadically between the two men, but mostly this is a tale of intense, mutual affection. In this writing, Peppiatt never seems to acquire accomplishments of his own (he is, in fact, a well-known art historian), other than this memoir and a companion biography of Bacon, but he is a congenial guide to the bombastic Bacon, his painting, his circle, his sycophants, a whole host of literary and artistic figures from the 60s, 70s and 80s, Bacon’s unlucky romantic life that left at least two dead, and the cultural zeitgeist of those clamorous decades.
November 1, 2021
Much more intimate and personal than I expected, which is both a strength and weakness for this book depending on what you're looking for. Michael Peppiatt developed a close relationship with Bacon, and he tells it all from a point of subjective honesty, but because Francis had known Michael would be writing about his legacy and because of the way things are presented I get the feeling that Francis was (consciously or not) editing, emphasizing, and omitting different parts of his life to achieve a certain effect of presence, although his underlying character does eventually rear its head every now and then when Michael goes far enough with him. The final result is a mixed bag of sincerity and theatre, all of which is beautifully written and structured. The book definitely does a great job of pulling you into the lives at play and the times they unfolded through, but it is not an objective, unbiased, outsider biography. This is a book Michael wrote about a friend he had and his encounters with him.
March 20, 2022
For reasons I can’t fathom, this is a highly rated biography of Francis Bacon. However, it is way more about the author, who endlessly name drops and reels off lists of fancy food and alcohol consumed on nights out with the painter and his circle. But what is unbearable is the dialogue. He starts off interviewing Bacon, so you’d imagine he manages to jot down the gist of their conversations after hours of binge drinking together. But they become friends and the formalities are dropped, the author is still able to recall pages and pages of conversations (apparently verbatim) over hours of drinking and clubbing. I wanted to give up on it early on, but got through a third of it before I finally did.
August 12, 2018
The prose was, quite frankly, like an already ecstatic child consuming yet more E-numbers and trying to sit down and riff on their enjoyment of Mr Blobby.
The best bits were the descriptions of Bacon's art, but it all got a bit repetitive. I'm not convinced Peppiatt should be a writer, am not convinced his links didn't pave the way for his whole career because this was piss-poor. However, his subject was fascinating even if he failed to capture the enchantment of the world he was reporting. Blah blah. Blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. 3.6 Yawn.
The best bits were the descriptions of Bacon's art, but it all got a bit repetitive. I'm not convinced Peppiatt should be a writer, am not convinced his links didn't pave the way for his whole career because this was piss-poor. However, his subject was fascinating even if he failed to capture the enchantment of the world he was reporting. Blah blah. Blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. 3.6 Yawn.
December 16, 2018
this book is pretty cool. a very intimate portrait of Bacon as this Energetic charismatic larger than life person, and lights up every page that is is in. speaks about art,( much of it he doesnt like) literature and music. drinks way too much wine, and generally does alot of over the top things. Bacon also shows alof of his more poisonous side, snapping at his dining companions aand stuff. this also comes with a detailed description of a art-critic living in expensive paris, scrapping a livning by his wits and connections.
July 6, 2022
A story of one friend in a mutual friendship
While I did enjoy my time with Michael's book, I have one slight annoyance with it, and that's that I wished to have known more about the author. I wish he would have introduced Alice when they had met originally, instead of saying, "oh by the way I've been dating this girl for twelve years and now she's leaving me." I did love their friendship, although I do think it gets rather tedious to listen to depictions of eating lunches in Paris and going on benders in London. That seems to be 75% of this
While I did enjoy my time with Michael's book, I have one slight annoyance with it, and that's that I wished to have known more about the author. I wish he would have introduced Alice when they had met originally, instead of saying, "oh by the way I've been dating this girl for twelve years and now she's leaving me." I did love their friendship, although I do think it gets rather tedious to listen to depictions of eating lunches in Paris and going on benders in London. That seems to be 75% of this
January 13, 2021
"Mad, bad and dangerous to know" could be a quote for Francis Bacon. This memoir by Michael Peppiatt, follows his various meetings with Bacon over decades. Slipping in and out of the old Soho life, you wonder how Bacon survived so long with the extraordinary drinking and eating. Just as Francis' art is unique viewing, you get a sense of the processes at play. There are no photos and for me this enhances the writing as you have to go and look for the paintings.
July 24, 2021
The author was a close friend and confident of Bacons since first meeting him as a student in the 1960s. This whirl of dinners and discussions and fabulous wines drunk in enormous quantities was so interesting. Fascinating glimpses as well into Bacons relationship with George Dyer and his suicide. The Colony club banter, the bitching about Lucien Freud and Hockney. But also the poignant conversations late into the night around death and guilt and all the intensity driven into those paintings.
July 28, 2023
I listened to half the book. By the end of it it was a torture because of the quality of writing and ethical norms of the author.it’s a biographical book about someone who was around the artist. Not a great person wrote not a great book. I thought is understand more about the artist. I did a bit, but the method was too painful and not worth it
January 12, 2024
Interesting one. Fun to hear about the life of an artist. Something we can all romanticize but clearly looks unique for each “artist”. And to see how intertwined this artist and this author were is fascinating.. I enjoyed. Well written. Gave me food for thought in life and art and who I want to be when thinking about these 2 things
January 22, 2024
A fascinating and personal memoir, a very natural look into the life of Francis Bacon, repetition, neuroses, vice and all. I found it interesting for the very unedited reproductions of conversation even if it was a bit repetitive
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