In Camera - Francis Bacon: Photography, Film and the Practice of Painting

(Paperback)

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A lavishly illustrated look at the sources behind the paintings of Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon famously found inspiration in photographs, film-stills and mass-media imagery. In this new, updated edition of In Camera, Martin Harrison reveals how these sources informed some of Bacon's most important paintings and triggered decisive turning points in the artist's stylistic development. Key influences, including the masters Velzquez, Poussin and Rodin, the photographer Eadweard Muybridge and the film director Sergei Eisenstein, are given close consideration. Bacon's work is examined in relation to the precedents set by other artists working in the tradition of making use of mechanical reproductions, including Pablo Picasso and Walter Sickert, and in the context of his contemporaries Lucian Freud, Mark Rothko, Graham Sutherland and Patrick Heron. With the aid of over 270 illustrations, including valuable source images and documents, In Camera is a bravura accomplishment of original research, addressing important questions about Bacon's painting practice and shedding fresh light on his life and work.

Reviews

'An indispensable work of reference for anyone wishing to follow the protracted dialogue that Bacon conducted with photography and through photography with the art of the past,his own work and real life' - Art Newspaper
'Scrupulous and well-balancedcrammed with information and illuminating speculation' - Literary Review
'Bacon's working documents [are] painstakingly retrieved and analysed by Martin Harrison an opulent, paradoxically beautiful book' - Observer
'A revelation' - Daily Telegraph

Author Bio

Martin Harrison is one of the foremost scholars of Francis Bacon, and the editor of Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonn.