1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990sFrancis Bacon was born in a nursing home at 63 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin on the 28th October 1909. He was the second of five children born to English parents who had recently settled in Ireland, but who had no Irish blood ties. His father, Anthony Edward 『Eddy』 Mortimer Bacon, a retired Army Major, now determined on a career as a breeder and trainer of horses. His decision to do so in Ireland was principally motivated by reasons of cost, though he had some knowledge of the land from his hunting days. Francis’s mother, Christina Winifred Loxley Bacon, née Firth, came from a Sheffield family who had established their fortune in steel. Her family did not have the ancestral pedigree of the Bacons (who were collateral descendants of the Elizabethan philosopher and statesman, Francis Bacon but she was considerably more wealthy than her husband.1909年10月28日，弗朗西斯·培根出生於都柏林Lower Baggot街63號的一家養老院。他是五個孩子中的老二，父母是英國人，最近定居在愛爾蘭，但沒有愛爾蘭血統。培根的父親安東尼·愛德華·「艾迪」·莫蒂默·培根(Anthony Edward「Eddy」Mortimer Bacon)是一名退休的陸軍少校，現在決定以飼養和馴馬為職業。他決定在愛爾蘭這麼做主要是出於成本的考慮，儘管他從狩獵時代就對這片土地有所了解。弗朗西斯的母親克裡斯蒂娜·維妮弗瑞德·洛克斯利·培根(Christina Winifred Loxley Bacon, nee Firth)來自謝菲爾德的一個鋼鐵業世家。她的家族沒有培根家族的血統(培根家族是伊莉莎白時代的哲學家和政治家弗朗西斯·培根的旁系後裔)，但她比她的丈夫富有得多。The family’s first residence in Ireland was Cannycourt House near the Curragh, Co. Kildare, an area renowned for its horse breeding and racing. During the First World War they uprooted to London, where Eddy Bacon served in the War Office. After the war they returned to an Ireland fundamentally changed by the 1916 Rising. The subsequent War of Independence (1919-1921) and Civil War (1922-23) cast a shadow of violence over the countryside, particularly for the Protestant gentry. The Bacon family moved between various country houses in Co. Laois and Co. Kildare and, for shorter stays, to England. Bacon’s only prolonged experience of formal schooling was at the Dean Close School, Cheltenham, where he boarded from the autumn of 1924 to the spring of 1926.這個家族在愛爾蘭的第一處住所是位於基爾代爾郡Curragh附近的Cannycourt House，該地區以養馬和賽馬而聞名。第一次世界大戰期間，他們搬到了倫敦，埃迪·培根在那裡的陸軍部服役。戰後，他們回到了愛爾蘭，1916年的起義徹底改變了愛爾蘭的面貌。隨後的獨立戰爭(1919-1921年)和內戰(1922-23年)給鄉村地區，尤其是新教貴族，投下了暴力的陰影。培根一家輾轉於拉奧伊斯和基爾代爾的鄉間別墅之間，並在英國作了短暫停留。培根唯一長期的正規教育經歷是在切爾滕納姆的迪安學校，他從1924年秋天到1926年春天在那裡寄宿。His home-life was chilly and fraught. His father, while not unintelligent, was a belligerent and argumentative man; his mother, a gregarious hostess inclined to self-absorption. At an early age Francis developed chronic asthma, a life-long affliction that hampered any efforts at country pursuits and diminished him in the eyes of his father. He was close, however, to his maternal grandmother, Winifred Margaret Supple, 『Granny Supple,』 who manifestly disliked her son-in-law. Her house near Abbeyleix contained bow-ended rooms that would be echoed in the backdrops of Bacon’s paintings.他的家庭生活寒冷而充滿憂慮。他的父親雖然並不愚笨，但卻是一個好鬥好辯的人;他的母親是個愛交際的女主人，很愛自我陶醉。方濟各在很小的時候就患上了慢性哮喘，這是一種終生的疾病，阻礙了他在鄉間追求的努力，也削弱了他在父親眼中的形象。然而，他和他的外祖母很親近，「祖母依依」，顯然不喜歡她的女婿。她在阿貝萊伊附近的房子裡有一些弓形的房間，這些房間在培根的畫作背景中迴蕩。Bacon’s emerging homosexuality severely strained relations with his family and, by his own account, he was expelled from the household in 1926, after Major Bacon caught his son trying on his mother’s underwear. Bacon’s humiliation was heightened by a strong physical attraction towards his father, first realised through sexual encounters with stable hands.The 16-year-old Bacon went to London with no clear idea of what he wanted to do. During the autumn and winter of 1926 he simply drifted, kept afloat by a modest (£3 a week) allowance from his mother a series of odd jobs and furtive encounters with older men. 『I can’t say I was what’s called moral when I was young,』 he recalled, and he certainly had few qualms about engaging in petty theft or riffling through the pockets of a casual pick-up.培根的同性戀傾向嚴重影響了他和家人的關係。據培根自己說，1926年，他被趕出了家，因為培根少校發現他的兒子在試穿母親的內衣。培根對他父親強烈的身體吸引力，這是他第一次通過與馬廄的手發生性關係而意識到的，這進一步加劇了他的羞辱。16歲的培根去倫敦時並不清楚自己想做什麼。1926年的秋冬季，他過著漂泊的生活，靠母親給的一筆不多的零用錢(每周3英鎊)維持生活，做了一系列零工，還偷偷地和老男人鬼混。他回憶說:「我不能說我年輕的時候是道德的。」當然，當他犯小偷小摸的錯誤，或者在隨便找來的人兜裡偷東西時，他也不會有什麼顧慮。Bacon’s father made one final attempt to influence his son’s life and it was exceedingly inept. He arranged for Francis to accompany a friend and relation on his wife’s side, a certain Harcourt-Smith, on a trip to Berlin in the spring of 1927. Eddy Bacon seems to have hoped that the ultra-masculine Harcourt-Smith would iron out his son’s effeminacy. Instead the sexually voracious guardian took advantage of his charge, a turn-around Bacon later recounted with considerable mirth.Berlin was Bacon’s first overwhelming cultural experience. He savoured its opulence, experienced at first hand in the Hotel Adlon, and its squalor, felt in the poverty of the surrounding streets. The erotic life of the city was startlingly uninhibited and artistically it thrived with new developments in architecture, painting and cinema. It may have been in Berlin that Bacon first saw Battleship Potemkin (1925) by the Soviet filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein. Its full impact on the young man would not surface for several decades.培根的父親做了最後一次嘗試來影響他兒子的生活，這是非常愚蠢的。1927年春天，他安排弗朗西斯陪他妻子的一個親戚朋友，一個叫哈考特-史密斯的人去柏林旅行。埃迪·培根似乎希望超男性化的哈考特-史密斯能消除他兒子的柔弱。相反，貪婪的監護人利用了他的指控，培根後來講述了他的轉變，並笑得很開心。柏林是培根的第一次文化體驗。他在阿德隆旅館親身體驗了這裡的繁華，在周圍街道的貧窮中感受到了這裡的骯髒。這座城市的情色生活令人驚訝地無拘無束，隨著建築、繪畫和電影的新發展，它在藝術上蓬勃發展。培根可能是在柏林第一次看到蘇聯導演謝爾蓋·愛森斯坦的《波將金號戰艦》(1925)。它對這位年輕人的全面影響要幾十年才能顯現出來。The omnivorous guardian soon moved on, and the future artist remained in the city for two months, before departing for Paris. Despite his recollections of being painfully shy, Bacon had the peculiar knack of meeting people who could help him develop his talents. One was Yvonne Bocquentin, a sophisticated connoisseur whom he met at an exhibition opening, a hint that he was already taking an interest in the visual arts. The Bocquentins offered Bacon a room in their house near Chantilly, where Bacon also took his first lessons in French. His three months in Chantilly left him with one indelible memory. It was of Nicholas Poussin’s painting, The Massacre of the Innocents, c.1628-29, Château de Chantilly (Musée Condé), and its portrayal of a screaming mother trying to protect her infant. In Bacon’s mind it was 『probably the best human cry ever painted,』 a precocious sign of his obsession with a single image by another artist.這位雜食的守護者很快就離開了，這位未來的藝術家在這座城市待了兩個月，然後動身去巴黎。儘管在記憶中，培根極其害羞，但他有一種特殊的本領，能結識那些能幫助他發展才能的人。其中一位是伊馮·波昆廷(Yvonne Bocquentin)，他在一次展覽開幕式上認識了這位老練的鑑賞家，這暗示他已經對視覺藝術產生了興趣。波坎汀一家在他們尚蒂伊附近的房子裡給培根提供了一個房間，培根也在那裡開始了他的法語課程。在尚蒂伊三個月的生活給他留下了不可磨滅的記憶。那是尼古拉斯·普桑(Nicholas Poussin)的畫作《無辜者的大屠殺》(The Massacre of The Innocents，約1628-29年)，尚蒂伊城堡(Musee Conde)，畫中有一個尖叫的母親試圖保護她的嬰兒。在培根看來，這幅畫「可能是他畫過的最好的人類的哭聲」，這是他痴迷於另一位藝術家的單一畫作的早熟跡象。Bacon seems to have considered becoming an artist only after attending an exhibition of drawings by Picasso at the Galerie Paul Rosenberg in the summer of 1927. The drawings were varied in period and content but Picasso’s imaginative mastery of line struck a deep chord. Bacon began making drawings and watercolours himself, apparently without formal guidance. Having moved to a bohemian hotel in Montparnasse, he had ample opportunity to visit exhibitions by Picabia, de Chirico and Soutine and to view the latest releases at the cinema. Towards the end of 1928, he had resolved to return to London and undertook a brief but surprising enterprise.培根似乎是在1927年夏天參加了畢卡索在保羅·羅森伯格美術館舉辦的畫展後才開始考慮成為一名藝術家的。這些畫在不同的時期和內容都有所不同，但畢卡索對線條的想像力卻引起了人們深深的共鳴。培根開始自己繪畫和水彩，顯然沒有正式的指導。搬到蒙帕納斯的一家波西米亞酒店後，他有足夠的機會參觀Picabia, de Chirico和Soutine的展覽，並在電影院觀看最新上映的電影。1928年底，他決定回到倫敦，進行一項短暫但令人驚訝的事業。Bacon became an interior decorator and furniture designer, setting himself up in a studio at 17 Queensberry Mews West, South Kensington. The pieces he devised were ingenious variations on the modernist language of chrome-plated steel and glass pioneered by designers such as Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier and Eileen Gray. The sources of Bacon’s technical knowledge and, indeed, the identity of the manufacturer are still unknown; his rugs were made at the Royal Wilton Carpet factory. By August 1930, Bacon had caught the attention of The Studio magazine, which presented his designs as examples of the 『1930 Look in British Decoration』. He even managed to sell a few pieces, though they largely remained within a small circle of friends and occasional patrons.培根成了一名室內裝潢師和家具設計師，在南肯辛頓昆斯伯裡西路17號(Queensberry Mews West)的一間工作室工作。他設計的作品是對馬塞爾•布勞耶(Marcel Breuer)、勒•柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)和艾琳•格雷(Eileen Gray)等設計師開創的鍍鉻鋼鐵和玻璃現代主義語言的巧妙變化。培根的技術知識來源和製造商的身份仍然不為人知;他的地毯是在皇家威爾頓地毯工廠。到1930年8月，培根引起了工作室雜誌的注意，雜誌將他的設計作為「1930年英國裝飾風格」的例子。他甚至成功地賣出了幾件作品，儘管這些作品大多只在一小群朋友和偶爾的主顧中出售。The man who secured the majority of Bacon’s commissions was an Australian Post-Cubist painter, Roy de Maistre. He also guided the fledgling artist in his first steps in oil painting, and by November 1930 Bacon was ready to mount a modest exhibition of paintings and rugs in Queensberry Mews, together with works by de Maistre and the actress/portraitist, Jean Shepeard. Among Bacon’s earliest patrons was Eric Hall, a well-off married man and pillar of the community, who continued an intimate affair with the artist for over 15 years. Despite such rapid progress, Bacon found it difficult to make a living from either his furniture or his paintings.獲得培根大部分委託的是澳大利亞後立體派畫家羅伊·德·梅斯特爾(Roy de Maistre)。他還指導這位羽翼未出的藝術家在油畫方面邁上了第一步。1930年11月，培根準備在昆斯伯裡·梅斯特爾和女演員兼肖像畫家吉恩·謝皮爾德(Jean Shepeard)的作品一起在昆斯伯裡·梅斯特爾(Queensberry Mews)舉辦一場小規模的畫展，展出油畫和地毯。埃裡克·霍爾(Eric Hall)是培根最早的贊助人之一，他是一名富裕的已婚男子，也是社區的棟梁，他與培根的親密關係持續了15年之久。儘管進步如此之快，培根還是發現無論是家具還是繪畫都難以維持生計。In 1933 he moved to 71 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea. His domestic arrangements were decidedly eccentric. Over the next twenty years he shared various living quarters with his old nanny, Jessie Lightfoot, who could also be light with her fingers when their funds ran short.1933年，他搬到了切爾西皇家醫院路71號。他的家庭安排顯然是古怪的。在接下來的20年裡，他和他的保姆傑西萊特福特(Jessie Lightfoot)住在不同的住所裡，當他們的資金短缺時，她也會變得很輕鬆。At the age of 23, Bacon painted his first truly original work, entitled Crucifixion, 1933. It was a small spectral painting clearly indebted to the biomorphs of Picasso. At this stage, he no longer considered himself a designer (a career he subsequently and unjustly disparaged), but enjoyed some initial success as an artist. In April 1933 he exhibited as part of a group show at the Mayor Gallery, and in the same year Crucifixion, 1933 was reproduced in Herbert Read’s book, Art Now and purchased by the collector, Sir Michael Sadler. Sadler intended commissioning a portrait based on an X-ray of his skull, an idea that was incorporated into another, more colourful treatment of the Crucifixion from the same year.1933年，23歲的培根完成了他的第一部真正的原創作品《十字架》。這是一幅小小的光譜畫，顯然得益於畢卡索的生物形態。在這個階段，他不再認為自己是一名設計師(他後來不公正地貶低了這一職業)，而是作為一名藝術家獲得了一些最初的成功。1933年4月，他作為市長畫廊一組展覽的一部分在展出，同年，1933年的十字架被複製到赫伯特·裡德的書《現在藝術》中，並被收藏家麥可·薩德勒爵士購買。薩德勒打算根據對他頭顱的x射線拍攝一幅肖像，這個想法被融入了同年另一幅更豐富多彩的受難畫中。After such a promising start, Bacon’s career began to falter. His one-man show of seven paintings and some five or six gouaches and drawings at the specially devised Transition Gallery in February 1934 sold poorly and received a condescending notice in The Times. In the summer of 1936 his work was rejected by the International Surrealist Exhibition in London on the grounds that it was 『insufficiently surreal』.在有了這樣一個充滿希望的開始之後，培根的事業開始走下坡路。1934年2月，他在專門設計的過渡畫廊(Transition Gallery)展出了七幅油畫和五六幅水粉畫和素描，他的個展賣得很差，受到了《紐約時報》屈尊的關注。1936年夏天，他的作品被倫敦的國際超現實主義展覽拒絕，理由是「不夠超現實」。The result was that Bacon’s output declined and he returned to his previous drifting life. In 1936 he moved from Royal Hospital Road to 1 Glebe place where he remained until 1943. Despite his inclusion in an exhibition of ten 『Young British Painters』, organised by Eric Hall in January 1937, scarcely any work survives from this period. Most of it was destroyed by the artist, a pattern of ruthless self-editing that he pursued for most of his life, but particularly so during his early years. 結果，培根的產量下降了，他又回到了以前漂泊的生活。1936年，他從皇家醫院路搬到格萊布廣場1號，一直住到1943年。1937年1月，埃裡克·霍爾(Eric Hall)組織了一場名為「十名年輕英國畫家」的展覽，儘管他的作品被收錄其中，但幾乎沒有任何作品能從那個時期倖存下來。大部分作品都被這位藝術家破壞了，這是他一生中大部分時間都在追求的一種無情的自我編輯模式，尤其是在他的早年。Bacon’s asthma meant that he was pronounced unfit for active service in the Second World War. He did, however, volunteer for a role in Civil Defence where he worked in ARP (Air Raid Precautions), whose duties included fire-fighting, civilian rescue and the recovery of the dead. His asthma predictably worsened amidst the rubble-strewn streets and in 1943 he resigned. Somewhat unusually for a self-professed urbanite, he stayed in a rented cottage near Petersfield in Hampshire with Eric Hall.培根的哮喘意味著他被宣布不適合在第二次世界大戰中服現役。然而，他志願參加了民防組織的ARP(空襲預防)，其職責包括滅火、平民救援和尋找死者。在瓦礫遍地的街道上，他的哮喘不出所料地惡化了。1943年，他辭職了。他和埃裡克·霍爾(Eric Hall)一起住在漢普郡彼得菲爾德(Petersfield)附近一間租來的小別墅裡，這對一個自詡為都市人的人來說有點不同尋常。Bacon was intrigued by the poems of T S Eliot, whose play The Family Reunion led him to a far richer source of ideas and sensations, The Oresteia by the ancient Greek dramatist, Aeschylus. He relished the evocative translations from the trilogy in W B Stanford’s Aeschylus in his Style, an academic study he bought soon after its publication in 1942. The Oresteia’s treatment of an ill-starred family trapped within a murderous cycle of revenge and guilt exerted a curious hold over the artist. It was no more than a year or two before its inspiration began to seep into his paintings.培根對T·S·艾略特的詩很感興趣，艾略特的戲劇《家庭團圓》給他帶來了豐富的思想和感受，古希臘劇作家埃斯庫羅斯的《俄瑞斯忒亞》。他喜歡史丹福大學的《埃斯庫羅斯》(Aeschylus)中三部曲中令人回味的譯本，這本書是他在1942年出版後不久買下的學術研究著作。奧瑞斯提亞對一個陷入復仇和內疚的惡性循環的倒黴家庭的處理，對藝術家產生了一種奇怪的影響。僅僅過了一兩年，他的靈感就開始滲透到他的畫作中。In late 1943 Bacon moved into the ground floor of 7 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, a house once owned by the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. Its cavernous moth-eaten grandeur provided an appropriate backdrop for an illicit casino run by Bacon and Lightfoot. It was in this space that Bacon completed a painting that finally launched his name, a work that unnerved its first audience.1943年末，培根搬進了南肯辛頓克倫威爾廣場7號的一層，這棟房子曾為前拉斐爾派畫家約翰·埃弗雷特·米萊斯(John Everett Millais)所有。它那被蟲蛀了的宏偉洞穴為培根和萊特福特經營的非法賭場提供了合適的背景。正是在這個空間裡，培根完成了一幅最終讓他聲名遠揚的畫作，這幅作品讓第一批觀眾感到不安。Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944 was hung in a group exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery, New Bond Street in April 1945, mere weeks before the end of the war in Europe. Figure in a Landscape, 1945 was also included but it was the Three Studies that rivetted the attention of public and critics. The triptych, with its hot orange background and stone-coloured monsters of vaguely human descent, left a lasting and disquieting impression. Despite its title, the figures were inspired by the Furies, mythical agents of revenge who pursued Orestes in Aeschylus’s tragedy. The painting was bought by Eric Hall, who later presented it to the Tate Gallery.1945年4月，歐洲戰爭結束前幾周，新邦德街勒費夫爾畫廊(Lefevre Gallery)舉行了一場集體展覽，展出了1944年十字架底部的三幅畫像。其中也包括1945年的一幅風景畫，但吸引了公眾和評論家注意的是這三項研究。這幅三聯畫以熾熱的橙色為背景，石頭色的怪物隱約帶有人類血統，給人留下了持久而不安的印象。儘管它的標題，人物的靈感來自於復仇女神，在埃斯庫羅斯的悲劇中追求俄瑞斯忒斯的神話復仇代理人。這幅畫被埃裡克·霍爾買下，後來他把它送給了泰特美術館。The following year Bacon realised a work of unparalleled ambition. Painting, 1946 came about through an unlikely series of transformations. Bacon claimed that it began as an attempt to paint a bird alighting on a field but ended as an assemblage of meat carcasses and a mutilated, almost headless man beneath an umbrella. The artist Graham Sutherland, at that time a close friend of Bacon, was greatly impressed by the work, so much so that he insisted that the dealer and artist, Erica Brausen contact Bacon immediately. She bought the work in early autumn and it was displayed in several group exhibitions, including a show of 20th century art at the Musée d』Art Moderne, Paris, in November 1946, before being acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1948. Bacon would remain with Brausen’s Hanover Gallery for the next 12 years, but did not mount a one-man show there until November 1949.第二年，培根完成了一部野心空前的作品。《1946年繪畫》經歷了一系列不可思議的轉變。培根聲稱，這幅畫一開始是試圖畫一隻鳥落在田野上，但最後畫的是一堆屍體和一把傘下一個幾乎無頭的肢解的人。培根當時的密友、藝術家格雷厄姆·薩瑟蘭(Graham Sutherland)對這幅作品印象深刻，以至於他堅持讓交易商兼藝術家埃裡卡·布勞森(Erica Brausen)立即聯繫培根。她在初秋買下了這幅作品，並在幾次集體展覽中展出，其中包括1946年11月在巴黎現代藝術博物館(Musee d』art Moderne)舉辦的20世紀藝術展，1948年被紐約現代藝術博物館(Museum of Modern art, New York)買下。此後的12年裡，培根一直在布勞森的漢諾瓦畫廊工作，但直到1949年11月，培根才在那裡舉辦了個人畫展。Within weeks of selling Painting, 1946, Bacon was on his way to Monte Carlo. There he gambled recklessly and sometimes with considerable success. He spent large parts of the next few years on the Côte d』Azur, often with Eric Hall. The climate eased his asthma, the nightlife catered to his desires and the landscape set him thinking. The intense, unflinching light, which impressed the artist, also made it difficult for him to paint. In fact, he scarcely completed any paintings while abroad (no works survive from 1947) and when faced with an imminent deadline, would accomplish the greater part of his work in London. This did not deter him from imploring the Sutherlands to visit and even work in Monte Carlo, which they did in 1947.1946年，培根在賣完畫幾周後，就動身前往蒙特卡洛。在那裡，他不顧一切地賭博，有時還大獲成功。接下來幾年的大部分時間，他都在蔚藍海岸度過，經常和埃裡克•霍爾(Eric Hall)在一起。那裡的氣候緩解了他的哮喘，夜生活滿足了他的欲望，那裡的風景讓他思考。強烈而堅定的光線給藝術家留下了深刻的印象，也使他難以作畫。事實上，他在國外幾乎沒有完成過任何作品(1947年以後就沒有作品保存下來了)，而且在面臨即將到來的最後期限時，他將在倫敦完成大部分作品。這並沒有阻止他懇求薩瑟蘭夫婦到蒙特卡洛去訪問，甚至在1947年去工作。While Bacon sent letters to Brausen reassuring her that he was busy at work and, naturally, that he needed additional funds, he had next to nothing to show for himself. As his first one-man show approached, he returned to London and rapidly built up a body of work. The lack of time had a direct impact on what Bacon produced. The works were simpler, reduced with one exception to a single figure and far more focused in expression, dwelling on significant and disturbing details such as open mouths, teeth, ears and safety pins. Head I, 1948, with its restricted palette of greys and blacks established an ideal precedent for an artist now in a hurry. His subsequent works departed from it in one vital respect; they were painted on the unprimed or 『wrong』 side of the canvas rather than on hardboard. Bacon began working in this way while still in Monte Carlo. According to Bacon, he had used up all his primed canvases and decided, perhaps out of desperation, to take one off its stretcher and try working on the other side. He found the raw canvas held the paint with more bite, enhanced its texture and allowed thinner applications to soak into the canvas. The indelibility of each mark raised the stakes, the medium’s intractability posed a rewarding challenge, and Bacon found a technique precisely attuned to his temperament. He continued painting on the unprimed side, though the reverse was always primed, till the end of his life.培根寫信給布勞森安慰她說，他工作很忙，自然需要額外的資金，但他幾乎沒有什麼可炫耀的。當他的第一次個展臨近時，他回到了倫敦，並迅速建立了大量的作品。時間的缺乏直接影響了培根的產出。這些作品都比較簡單，除了一個人，都被精簡為一個人物，並且更加注重表達，專注於重要的和令人不安的細節，比如張開的嘴、牙齒、耳朵和安全別針。1948年的《Head I》以其有限的灰色和黑色調色板為現在匆忙的藝術家樹立了一個理想的先例。他後來的作品在一個至關重要的方面與它背道而馳;它們被塗在帆布未塗底漆或「錯誤」的那一邊，而不是在硬紙板上。培根還在蒙特卡洛時就開始這樣工作了。據培根說，他已經用完了所有的底漆畫布，也許是出於絕望，他決定從擔架上取下一幅，試著在另一邊作畫。他發現原始畫布上的顏料咬得更緊，增強了它的紋理，讓更薄的顏料滲入畫布。每一個標記的不可磨滅性提高了賭注，媒質的棘手性帶來了有益的挑戰，培根發現了一種與他的性情完全相符的技術。他繼續用未塗過顏料的那一面作畫，儘管相反的那一面總是塗過顏料，直到他生命的盡頭。One painting stood apart from its monochrome companions in the 1949 exhibition. This was Head VI, 1949, with its sensuous purple cape. It was a variation on Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1650, a theme he mined with obsessive intensity throughout the following decade and intermittently in the 1960s. His experience of the Velázquez was entirely by way of reproductions, a dependency that, far from limiting the artist, encouraged him to take extravagant licence. Another of his primary sources was a still of the Screaming Nurse from Eisenstein’s film, Battleship Potemkin, 1925. Bacon fused the scream and Pope to memorable effect in this and later works, but especially in an imposing canvas from the following year, Study after Velázquez, 1950. This was long presumed destroyed, but was recovered by the Estate of Francis Bacon nearly 50 years after it was painted.在1949年的展覽中，有一幅畫與其他單色畫截然不同。這是1949年的頭六世，披著性感的紫色鬥篷。這是委拉斯奎茲1650年創作的教皇伊諾森十世肖像的一個變種，在接下來的十年裡，他孜孜不倦地挖掘這個主題，並在20世紀60年代斷斷續續地挖掘。他對委拉斯貴支的體驗完全是通過複製的方式，這種依賴不僅沒有限制藝術家，反而鼓勵他獲得奢侈的執照。他的另一個主要資料來源是愛森斯坦1925年的電影《戰艦波將金號》中尖叫的護士的劇照。培根將《尖叫》和《教皇》融合在一起，在這幅作品和後來的作品中產生了令人難忘的效果，尤其是在次年的一幅氣勢恢宏的油畫《委拉斯開茲的研究》(1950)中。長期以來，人們都認為這幅畫已經被毀了，但弗朗西斯·培根(Francis Bacon)的遺產在它被繪製近50年後才找到它。In 1951 and again in 1952 Bacon sailed out to South Africa where his mother had moved after his father’s death. His sisters Ianthe and Winnie had settled in neighbouring Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe). During both visits, the artist was struck by the sight of wild animals moving through the long grass, a sensation he conjured up in several canvases of 1952, notably Study of a Figure in a Landscape, 1952. On his first voyage back in 1951, he stopped off for a couple of days in Cairo. Bacon held ancient Egyptian art in enormous admiration and later asserted that its achievement had been unsurpassed. From 1953 to 1954, he painted four works based on the great Sphinx.1951年和1952年，培根航行到南非，他的母親在他父親去世後搬到了那裡。他的姐妹Ianthe和Winnie定居在鄰近的南羅得西亞(現在的辛巴威)。在兩次訪問中，這位藝術家都被在長草叢中穿行的野生動物的景象所震撼，這種感覺他在1952年的幾幅油畫中都有出現，尤其是在對1952年風景畫中的人物的研究中。1951年，在他的第一次航行中，他在開羅停留了幾天。培根對古埃及藝術極為讚賞，後來宣稱其成就無人能及。從1953年到1954年，他以獅身人面像為原型創作了四幅作品。In those same two years Bacon depicted men in suits within dark, suggested surroundings. The series of seven paintings, Man in Blue I-VII, 1954, was his most reductive treatment of the subject and was inspired, in part, by a man who had modeled for the artist in the Imperial Hotel, Henley-on-Thames.在同樣的兩年裡，培根描繪了在黑暗中穿著西裝的男人，暗示著周圍的環境。他的七幅系列畫作《藍色的人I-VII, 1954年》(Man in Blue I-VII)是他對這個主題最還原的處理，部分靈感來自於一位曾在泰晤士河畔亨利帝國酒店(Imperial Hotel)為他做模特的人。Bacon had also had begun to tackle the nude in a more forthright manner. He painted Two Figures, 1953, and in the following year Two Figures in the Grass, 1954. The coupled male nudes from both works are derived from Eadweard Muybridge’s, The Human Figure in Motion, 1901, a volume of sequential photographs of the body in action. The Human Figure in Motion became an indispensable visual dictionary for Bacon. Its companion volume, Animals in Motion, 1899 provided visual templates for his paintings of dogs, such as Dog, 1952.In his paintings of Two Figures, the poses were based on Muybridge’s images of wrestlers, but manipulated to more personal and sexual ends. Bacon was aware of the ambiguity between the movements of wrestlers and lovers, acutely so, since his own love life had recently taken an obsessive and masochistic turn.培根也開始用一種更直接的方式處理裸體畫。1953年，他畫了《兩個人物》;接下來的一年，1954年，他又畫了《草地上的兩個人物》。這兩幅作品中的耦合男性裸體出自埃德沃德·邁布裡奇(Eadweard Muybridge) 1901年的作品《運動中的人體》(The Human Figure in Motion)，這本書是一卷連續的人體運動照片。對培根來說，運動中的人體圖形成了一部不可或缺的視覺詞典。與之配套的《運動中的動物》(1899)為他的狗畫提供了視覺模板，比如1952年的《狗》。在他的兩個人物的畫作中，姿勢是基於邁布裡奇的摔跤手的形象，但被處理成更私人和性的目的。培根很清楚摔跤手和情人的動作之間的模糊性，尤其清楚，因為他自己的愛情生活最近開始轉向強迫性和受虐狂。By 1950, Eric Hall was no longer living with Bacon, though he had left his wife and children, and later bought and donated Dog, 1952, to the Tate. Bacon left Cromwell Place after the death of Nanny Lightfoot on the 30th April 1951, an event that traumatised him. Over the next ten years he moved from studio to studio, most of them borrowed or strictly temporary. Among those friends who obliged with a room were Peter Pollock and Paul Danquah who lived in Battersea. Sometime before 1952, Bacon became involved with the former fighter and test pilot, Peter Lacy. Their relationship was a potent mixture of the compulsive and destructive, and Bacon remained in thrall to Lacy’s neurotic sadism for much of the decade.到了1950年，埃裡克·霍爾不再和培根生活在一起，儘管他離開了妻子和孩子，後來又在1952年買下並捐贈給了泰特美術館。1951年4月30日保姆萊特福特去世後，培根離開了克倫威爾莊園，這一事件讓他深受創傷。在接下來的十年裡，他從一個畫室搬到另一個畫室，大部分都是借來的，或者嚴格來說是臨時的。住在巴特西的彼得·波洛克和保羅·丹誇也願意租一間房。1952年以前的某個時候，培根開始和前戰鬥機和試飛員彼得·萊西交往。他們的關係是強迫性的和破壞性的強有力的混合體，而在那十年的大部分時間裡，培根都被萊西的神經質的施虐狂所奴役。When Lacy moved to Tangier in the mid-1950s, Bacon followed him. For the next few years he divided his time between Morocco and London, where his circle of friends ranged from Soho luminaries such as Muriel Belcher, John Deakin, John Minton, Michael Andrews and Frank Auerbach to the literary salons of Ann Fleming and Sonia Orwell. He got on well with Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, who became exceptionally loyal patrons. In Tangier he struck up friendships with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, but predictably accomplished little while actually there.20世紀50年代中期，當萊西搬到丹吉爾時，培根跟隨了他。在接下來的幾年裡，他分別在摩洛哥和倫敦生活，在那裡，他的朋友圈從蘇活區名人如Muriel Belcher, John Deakin, John Minton, Michael Andrews和Frank Auerbach，到Ann Fleming和Sonia Orwell的文學沙龍。他和羅伯特·塞恩斯伯裡(Robert Sainsbury)和麗莎·塞恩斯伯裡(Lisa Sainsbury)相處得很好，他們成為了特別忠誠的顧客。在丹吉爾，他結識了艾倫·金斯堡(Allen Ginsberg)和威廉·巴勒斯(William Burroughs)，但可以預見的是，他在丹吉爾幾乎沒有什麼成就。His international reputation, however, continued to grow. In 1954 he exhibited with Ben Nicholson and Lucian Freud in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. When in Rome (he failed to attend the Venice Biennale), he deliberately avoided seeing Velázquez’s Pope Innocent X in the flesh. He had his first one-man show in New York at Durlacher Brothers in 1953 and his first in Paris, at the Galerie Rive Droite in 1957.然而，他的國際聲譽繼續上升。1954年，他與本·尼科爾森和盧西安·弗洛伊德一起在威尼斯雙年展英國館展出作品。在羅馬時(他沒有參加威尼斯雙年展)，他刻意避免親眼看到委拉斯開茲的《伊森諾十世教皇》。1953年，他在紐約的杜拉切爾兄弟(Durlacher Brothers)舉辦了第一次個人畫展，1957年，他在巴黎的河岸畫廊(Galerie Rive Droite)舉辦了第一次個人畫展。By 1957 Bacon’s painting was undergoing a transformation in handling and colour, that much became dazzlingly apparent at his exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in March that year. There he presented six paintings inspired by Van Gogh’s The Painter on the Road to Tarascon, 1888 (destroyed during the Second World War), including one painted the year before. The next three works were made in a tremendous hurry to meet the show’s deadline and the remaining two added sometime later. Necessity accelerated a process already in train; Bacon’s application of paint became coarser, his impasto thick and ridged, and his colours far more strident in range and hue. Van Gogh was one stimulus, the Céret works of Chaim Soutine and the fierce light of Morocco were two others. It was a decisive break with the ghostly forms and sombre backgrounds of the first half of the 1950s, and a permanent one.到1957年，培根的畫作在處理和色彩上發生了轉變，這一點在當年3月漢諾瓦畫廊的展覽上變得令人眼花繚亂。在那裡，他展出了六幅受梵谷(Van Gogh) 1888年的《通往塔拉斯孔的路上的畫家》(The Painter on The Road to Tarascon，二戰期間被毀)啟發的畫作，包括一幅前一年的畫作。接下來的三幅作品是在非常匆忙的情況下完成的，以滿足展覽的最後期限，剩下的兩幅是稍後添加的。必要加速了已經在進行的進程;培根的顏料使用變得粗糙，他的衝擊變得厚重和有脊，他的色彩在範圍和色調上更加尖銳。梵谷是一個刺激因素，Chaim Soutine的Ceret作品和摩洛哥的強光是另外兩個。它與20世紀50年代前半部分幽靈般的形式和陰暗的背景決裂，而且是永久的決裂。What followed was a period of transition. He signed a contract in October 1958 with Marlborough Fine Art after its directors had offered to take on the considerable debt of £1,242 he then owed to the Hanover Gallery. Bacon respected the eye of Marlborough’s co-founder Frank Lloyd, and his day-to-day affairs were handled by the gallery’s Valerie Beston. 接下來是一個過渡時期。1958年10月，他與馬爾伯勒美術館(Marlborough Fine Art)籤訂了一份合同。當時，馬爾伯勒美術館的館長提出承擔他當時欠漢諾瓦美術館的1242英鎊的巨額債務。培根尊重馬爾伯勒聯合創始人弗蘭克·勞埃德的眼睛，他的日常事務由畫廊的瓦萊麗·貝斯頓處理。Three years later, in 1961, he took over 7 Reece Mews, a converted coach house in South Kensington, just around the corner from his old studio at Cromwell place. The first floor studio was to be the most important room in the artist’s life. Over the years it became an overwhelmingly cluttered space with vibrant daubs and accretions of paint on the walls and doors. Its layers of dust, debris and toxic pigments could only have exacerbated his chronic asthma. In later life, despite occasionally acquiring new and more spacious places to work, he always returned to this awkward but familiar room. The studio became Bacon’s complete visual world. Its heaps of torn photographs, fragments of illustrations and artist’s catalogues provided nearly all of his visual sources. He had all but given up painting from life.三年後，也就是1961年，他接手了南肯辛頓(South Kensington)由馬車房改建而成的7 Reece Mews住宅，就在克倫威爾廣場(Cromwell place)他以前的工作室附近。一樓的工作室將成為這位藝術家一生中最重要的房間。這些年來，它變成了一個極其雜亂的空間，牆壁和門上都是充滿活力的塗抹和增加的油漆。層層的灰塵、碎片和有毒色素只會加重他的慢性哮喘。在後來的生活中，儘管偶爾會有新的更寬敞的工作場所，他還是會回到這個尷尬但熟悉的房間。工作室成了培根的完整視覺世界。成堆的被撕破的照片、插圖的碎片和藝術家的目錄提供了他幾乎所有的視覺來源。他幾乎放棄了繪畫。
Within months of moving into Reece Mews, he produced his first large-scale triptych, Three Studies for a Crucifixion, 1962 (198.2 × 144.8 cm). He readily admitted that it was painted during an unusually booze-fuelled fortnight, a working method that rarely delivered results, but in this case liberated him. Throughout the next three decades Bacon used large-scale triptychs to address some of his grandest and most ambitious subjects.在搬到裡斯·米斯幾個月後，他製作了他的第一個大型三聯畫，1962年的十字架三聯畫(198.2 x144.8 cm)。他爽快地承認，這幅畫是在他異常狂飲的兩周時間裡完成的，這種工作方式很少有效果，但這次卻解放了他。在接下來的30年裡，培根用大規模的三聯畫來描繪他的一些最宏大、最雄心勃勃的主題。Three Studies for a Crucifixion was included along with 90 other works in a major retrospective at the Tate Gallery in May that year. The show established his preeminence among contemporary British painters but also marked a time of personal loss. On the opening day, amidst telegrams of congratulation, one message informed him of the death of Peter Lacy in Tangier. He had parted company with Lacy some years before, and his death from drink had not been difficult to predict, yet Bacon was nonetheless deeply affected. In 1963 he painted the dark and ambiguous Landscape near Malabata, Tangier in memory of Lacy’s final resting place.當年5月，泰特美術館(Tate Gallery)舉辦了一場大型回顧展，展出了三個關於耶穌受難的研究和其他90件作品。這場畫展確立了他在當代英國畫家中的卓越地位，但同時也標誌著他個人失去的時刻。在開幕式當天，在賀電中，有一條消息告訴他，彼得·萊西在丹吉爾去世了。他在幾年前就和萊西分手了，他死於酗酒並不難預測，但培根還是深受影響。1963年，為了紀念萊西最後的安息地，他在丹吉爾馬拉巴塔附近繪製了一幅黑暗而模糊的風景畫。Towards the end of 1963 a new man entered Bacon’s life. George Dyer was a dapper Eastender with a petty criminal past and a tough look that belied a depressive and insecure nature. Mainly through the medium of John Deakin’s photographs, Dyer became a recurrent subject of Bacon’s paintings in the 1960s.1963年底，一個新人進入了培根的生活。喬治·戴爾是一個衣冠楚楚的東城人，有過一段輕微的犯罪歷史，他的強硬外表掩蓋了他抑鬱和缺乏安全感的本性。Dyer主要是通過John Deakin的攝影這一媒介，在20世紀60年代成為Bacon繪畫中反覆出現的主題。Photography itself became an indispensable means to Bacon’s expressive ends. Deakin’s photographs of other close friends, Henrietta Moraes, Isabel Rawsthorne, Lucian Freud and Muriel Belcher allowed the artist to capture the vitality of his subjects while keeping a critical distance. He would twist their features and practice his 『injuries』 without having to contend with the judgment of the sitter (a problem he encountered at least once in the 1950s). Through photographs and other reproductions he could continually expand his repertory of attitudes and poses but return again to the source that inspired him. He didn’t simply confine his interest to what an image contained; he was keenly receptive to its physical state. The origins of certain painterly distortions in his canvases can be found in the tears, creases and paint accretions on prints and book pages littered across the studio floor. As Bacon himself remarked, 『don’t forget I look at everything.』攝影本身成為培根表達目的不可或缺的手段。迪肯為其他親密朋友拍攝的照片，包括亨麗埃塔·莫拉埃斯(Henrietta Moraes)、伊莎貝爾·勞斯索恩(Isabel Rawsthorne)、盧西恩·弗洛伊德(Lucian Freud)和穆裡爾·貝爾徹(Muriel Belcher)，讓迪肯在保持一定距離的同時，能夠捕捉到對象的活力。他可以扭曲它們的特徵，練習他的「受傷」，而不必與看護人的判斷抗爭(他在20世紀50年代至少遇到過一次這個問題)。通過照片和其他複製品，他可以不斷擴大自己的姿態和姿勢的儲備，但又會再次回到靈感的來源。他並沒有簡單地將自己的興趣局限在一幅圖像所包含的內容上;他對它的生理狀態很敏感。在他的畫布上，從散落在工作室地板上的印刷品和書頁上的淚水、摺痕和顏料堆積中，可以找到某些繪畫扭曲的根源。培根曾說過:「別忘了，我什麼都看。」Bacon looked at everything and was all the more critical as a result. Other painters, notably Abstract Expressionists, got short shrift or a withering rebuke. One living artist for whom he had great respect was the Swiss sculptor and draughtsman, Alberto Giacometti, though Bacon’s approval was largely confined to his drawings. The two met several times during preparations for Giacometti’s retrospective in the Tate in 1965 but Giacometti’s death, the following year, left little time for their friendship to develop.培根面面俱到，結果變得更加挑剔。其他畫家，尤其是抽象表現主義畫家，則受到了冷落或嚴厲的指責。培根非常尊敬的一位在世的藝術家是瑞士雕刻家兼畫家阿爾貝託·賈科梅蒂，儘管培根的認可很大程度上僅限於他的繪畫。兩人在1965年為賈科梅蒂在泰特美術館的回顧展做準備時見過幾次面，但第二年賈科梅蒂去世後，他們的友誼幾乎沒有時間發展。Bacon excelled as an artist during this period. From the opening years of the decade, he achieved a new level of virtuosity in paint. Passages of bravura brushwork and whipped up impasto were combined with delicate impressions of corduroy and cloth, and trails of paint squeezed directly from the tube. His backgrounds were frequently composed of bright, flat expanses of colour, and his larger compositions displayed a tireless invention. The effect could be, by turns, playful (George Dyer Riding a Bicycle, 1967) or menacing (Triptych Inspired by T S Eliot’s Poem 『Sweeney Agonistes,』 1967). In 1968 the artist went to New York for the first time, to an exhibition of his recent paintings at the Marlborough Gallery. While American critical opinion remained divided over the artist, the twenty works sold within a week. The show included some of his latest portraits of Dyer, replete with a host of visual puns and games, but the relationship itself was running out of fun. The strains had been there for some time. Dyer’s lack of purpose and worsening alcoholism, his sporadic suicide bids, the frequency and savagery of the rows and Bacon’s thwarted attempts to persuade him to live outside London (Dyer always returned) all told. 培根在這一時期是一位傑出的藝術家。從這十年的開始，他的繪畫技巧達到了一個新的水平。一段段華麗的筆觸和快速的衝擊，與燈芯絨和布料的精緻印象，以及直接從管中擠出的繪畫痕跡相結合。他的背景經常是由明亮、扁平的大面積色彩組成的，他較大的作品顯示了不知疲倦的發明。這種效果可以是好玩的(喬治·戴爾騎自行車，1967)，也可以是危險的(靈感來自T·S·艾略特(T S Eliot)的詩《斯維尼·阿甘尼斯特》(Sweeney Agonistes)， 1967)。1968年，這位藝術家第一次去紐約，在馬爾伯勒畫廊(Marlborough Gallery)參加他最近的畫作展覽。儘管美國評論界對這位藝術家的看法仍存在分歧，但這20幅作品卻在一周內售出。這場展覽包括了他最近為戴爾拍攝的一些肖像，充滿了視覺上的雙關語和遊戲，但這種關係本身已經失去了樂趣。這種緊張已經存在一段時間了。代爾缺乏目標，酗酒愈演愈烈，他斷斷續續的自殺，爭吵的頻繁和野蠻，培根試圖說服他住在倫敦以外(代爾總是回來)，但都失敗了。In 1971, matters descended into farce when Dyer tried to frame his lover for possession of cannabis by hiding 2.1 grams of it in his studio. Bacon was acquitted at trial. The artist now set his sights on a retrospective exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris, an honour exceptional for a living painter. Two nights before the opening of the show, and in cruel symmetry to Bacon’s experience at the opening of the Tate retrospective in 1962, Dyer was found dead from a drink and barbiturate overdose in a bathroom at the Hôtel des Saints-Pères. Bacon seemed to take the news with a strange detachment. A series of paintings made over the next few years record the true strength of his grief. These include the so-called black triptychs, such as In Memory of George Dyer, 1971, and Triptych August 1972. The bleakest and perhaps the greatest of these testaments is Triptych May-June 1973, a work of monumental and grave simplicity in which the circumstances of Dyer’s death are re-enacted.1971年，戴爾在自己的工作室裡藏了2.1克大麻，試圖誣陷他的情人藏有大麻，此事演變成了一場鬧劇。培根在審判中被宣告無罪。這位藝術家現在將目光投向了在巴黎大皇宮舉辦的回顧展，這對一位在世的畫家來說是一項非凡的榮譽。在展覽開幕的前兩晚，代爾被發現死在聖佩雷斯酒店(Hotel des Saints-Peres)的一間浴室裡，死於飲酒和過量服用巴比妥酸鹽，這與培根1962年在泰特回顧展開幕式上的經歷殘酷地對稱。培根似乎以一種奇怪的超然態度接受了這個消息。在接下來的幾年裡，一系列的畫作記錄了他悲傷的真實力量。其中包括所謂的「黑色三聯畫」，如1971年的《紀念喬治·戴爾》(In Memory of George Dyer)和1972年8月的三聯畫。其中最悽涼，也可能是最偉大的是1973年5月- 6月的三聯畫，這是一部不朽而又嚴肅樸素的作品，在這部作品中重現了代爾去世時的情景。Bacon spent considerable periods of time in Paris during the 1970s, and in 1974 bought a flat on rue de Birague, near the Place des Vosges. For the next decade and a half he was able to renew and deepen his friendships with Michel Leiris, Nadine Haim and Jacques Dupin. Bacon’s 1976 portrait of Surrealist author and critic Michel Leiris, a diminutive work of subtlety and insight, is among the finest he ever painted. The following year an important exhibition of his recent works was hosted at the Galerie Claude Bernard in Paris.上世紀70年代，培根在巴黎待了很長一段時間，1974年在比拉格街(rue de Birague)孚日廣場(Place des Vosges)附近買了一套公寓。在接下來的15年裡，他與米歇爾·萊裡斯、納丁·海姆和雅克·杜平重新建立並加深了友誼。培根在1976年為超現實主義作家兼評論家米歇爾·萊裡斯畫了一幅肖像，這是一幅短小精悍、極富洞察力的作品，是他所畫過的最好的作品之一。次年，他的最新作品在巴黎的克勞德·伯納德畫廊舉辦了一次重要的展覽。Bacon’s own recorded outlook on his life and work was first published in book form in 1975. Based on a series of interviews conducted with David Sylvester between 1962 and 1974, it was further expanded in 1980 and again in 1987. The interviews afforded Bacon an unusual degree of influence over the reception and discussion of his works. Annotated typescripts, found in the studio after his death, indicate that he even had a role in their editing. In his public utterances, Bacon placed heavy emphasis on the role of chance and accident in his work The evidence of the studio suggests that Bacon was a more deliberate artist than he cared to admit. He jotted down ideas for paintings in a cryptic and allusive style, frequently invoking the imperative as if the notes were exhortations. He outlined compositions in biro, paint and felt-tip on paper, over-painted and traced existing photographs to define and explore motifs. The photographs were sometimes of his own paintings and through these he sought to develop and improve works already out in the open. In the year that the interviews were first published, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, mounted an exhibition highlighting Bacon’s more recent works. The catalogue featured excerpts from recorded conversations with the American photographer, Peter Beard, who also sent the artist numerous and beautiful photographs of African wildlife. Among the 36 paintings exhibited at the show, George Dyer’s presence loomed heavily but Bacon, while prey to feelings of guilt, moved on. In the mid-1970s he met John Edwards, another good looking Eastender, then helping his brothers to manage three pubs. Bacon’s relationship with Edwards was essentially a paternal one and its stability was largely due to the self-possession and affability of the younger man.培根自己記錄下來的對自己生活和工作的看法於1975年首次以書的形式出版。根據1962年至1974年對大衛·西爾維斯特進行的一系列採訪，該調查在1980年和1987年進一步擴大。這些採訪使培根對其作品的接受和討論產生了不同尋常的影響。在他死後，人們在工作室裡找到了注釋過的打字稿，這表明他甚至參與了這些文稿的編輯工作。在他的公開講話中，培根強調了在他的作品中偶然和意外的作用。工作室的證據表明，培根是一個比他願意承認的更深思熟慮的藝術家。他以一種隱晦和隱晦的風格匆匆記下了繪畫的想法，經常引用命令，仿佛這些筆記是勸告。他在紙上用原子筆、顏料和氈頭勾勒出構圖的輪廓，在已有的照片上覆蓋和描摹，以定義和探索主題。這些照片有時是他自己的畫，通過這些照片，他試圖發展和改進已經公開的作品。在採訪首次發表的那一年，紐約大都會藝術博物館(Metropolitan Museum of Art)舉辦了一場展覽，突出展示培根最近的作品。該目錄摘錄了他與美國攝影師彼得?比爾德(Peter Beard)的對話錄音，比爾德還給這位藝術家寄去了大量非洲野生動物的美麗照片。在此次展覽上展出的36幅畫作中，喬治·戴爾的身影籠罩在人們的心頭，而培根雖然深受負罪感的折磨，但他還是選擇了離開。20世紀70年代中期，他遇到了另一位相貌英俊的東森德人約翰·愛德華茲(John Edwards)，之後他幫助他的兄弟們經營了三家酒吧。培根和愛德華茲的關係本質上是父愛關係，而這種關係的穩定很大程度上是由於年輕人的冷靜和和藹。Over the course of the next fifteen years, solo exhibitions and retrospectives of Bacon’s work were held around the world. These spanned several continents, from Madrid and Barcelona in 1978 to Tokyo, Kyoto and Nagoya in 1983 and Washington DC in 1989. In 1985 the Tate Gallery, London again held a major retrospective, this time with 125 works and the director’s statement that the artist was the 『greatest living painter』. Three years later a retrospective of just 22 works was held in the New Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. It was the first show by a major Western artist to be mounted in the Soviet Union.在接下來的15年裡，培根的個展和回顧展在世界各地舉行。從1978年的馬德裡和巴塞隆納，到1983年的東京、京都和名古屋，再到1989年的華盛頓特區，這些城市橫跨了數個大洲。1985年，倫敦泰特美術館(Tate Gallery)再次舉辦了大型回顧展，這次展出了125件作品，導演宣布這位藝術家是「在世的最偉大的畫家」。三年後，一場僅有22件作品的回顧展在莫斯科的新特列季亞科夫畫廊舉行。這是西方主要藝術家首次在蘇聯舉辦的展覽。As Bacon entered his seventies his work continued to evolve. He met the challenge of landscape, which he had largely avoided since his Van Gogh works of 1957. The paintings, such as Landscape, 1978, and A Piece of Waste Land, 1982, were deliberately enigmatic, being isolated segments of landscape without scale. The title of the latter work contains a surprisingly literal allusion to T S Eliot’s The Wasteland, yet the image, with its diagrammatic arrows, is pointedly unspecific. In Jet of Water, 1979 and Sand Dune, 1981, the quasi-industrial settings are about to be engulfed by either a sandstorm or a sudden explosion of water.培根七十多歲時，他的工作還在繼續發展。他接受了風景畫的挑戰，自1957年梵谷(Van Gogh)的作品以來，他基本上避免了這種挑戰。像《1978年的風景》和《1982年的一片荒地》這樣的畫作，是沒有尺度的、孤立的景觀片段，故意顯得神秘莫測。後一部作品的標題出人意料地包含了對T·S·艾略特的《荒原》的字面影射，然而這幅圖像，以及它的圖表箭頭，明顯是不明確的。在1979年的《水射流》和1981年的《沙丘》中，準工業背景即將被一場沙塵暴或突然的水爆炸吞沒。
During the 1980s, Bacon simplified his pictorial language, paring it down to its essentials. The human body was savagely abbreviated to a stump and a pair of legs (Study of the Human Body, 1982) or starkly implied by its residue (Blood on the Floor–Painting, 1986). His technique became, if anything, more nuanced and refined. Aerosol spray paint was used to create granular, gauze-like surfaces with the suggestion of bruising and medical trauma. His palette divided between paintings with searing red/orange backgrounds and those with a cooler tonality of greys, creams and pale blues. Among the most impressive achievements of his last decade were two portrait triptychs, Three Studies for a Portrait of John Edwards, 1984 and Study for Self-Portrait, Triptych, 1985-6. Both paintings conveyed a quality not often associated with the artist: an imposing sense of calm.
在20世紀80年代，培根簡化了他的圖形語言，將其精簡到最基本的部分。人體被野蠻地縮寫為一個樹樁和一雙腿(《人體研究》，1982)，或者其殘留物赤裸裸地暗示了這一點(地板上的血跡，1986)。如果有的話，他的技巧變得更加微妙和精緻了。氣溶膠噴漆被用來製造顆粒狀，像紗布一樣的表面，暗示著瘀傷和醫療創傷。他的調色板分為兩種風格，一種是熾熱的紅色/橙色背景，另一種是灰色、奶油色和淡藍色的較冷色調。在他最後十年最令人印象深刻的成就中，有兩幅肖像三聯畫，1984年的《約翰·愛德華茲肖像研究》和1985-6年的《自畫像研究三聯畫》。這兩幅畫都傳達了一種通常與藝術家無關的品質:一種令人難忘的平靜感。
Bacon, however, had not given up on desire. In his last years and in declining health (a cancerous kidney was removed in 1989), he enjoyed a passionate relationship with a cultivated young Spaniard, whom he had met sometime in 1987. Against his doctor’s advice Bacon made a trip to Madrid in April 1992. Within days of arrival he fell critically ill and was taken to a medical clinic. On the 28th of April, he suffered a heart attack and died in the presence of two nuns from the Servants of Mary. Bacon was trenchant in his atheism but there is no evidence that he resisted the care of the religious, as several times before he had been treated by sisters at the same clinic. Bacon’s remains were cremated in Spain and, as he requested, there was no service. His ashes were transported to England where they were scattered in a private ceremony. Bacon named John Edwards as the sole heir to his estate.然而，培根並沒有放棄欲望。在他生命的最後幾年裡，他的健康狀況每況愈下(1989年，一個癌變的腎臟被切除了)，他和一個有教養的西班牙年輕人保持著一段充滿激情的關係，兩人是在1987年認識的。培根不顧醫生的勸告，於1992年4月去了馬德裡。在抵達後的幾天內，他就病入膏肓，被送往一家醫療診所。4月28日，他心臟病發作，在瑪利亞僕人的兩位修女面前去世。培根的無神論是明確的，但沒有證據表明他抵制宗教的照顧，因為之前他曾多次在同一家診所接受姐妹們的治療。培根的遺體在西班牙火化，按照他的要求，沒有葬禮。他的骨灰被運往英國，並在一個私人儀式上撒於各處。培根指定約翰·愛德華茲為他財產的唯一繼承人。In the Reece Mews studio, a final portrait stood incomplete on a tall easel. It had been there since the previous November where it was observed by his sister Ianthe. The identity of its subject, the assertive profile caught half way between a self-portrait and a portrait of George Dyer, has so far defied resolution.在裡斯·米斯的畫室裡，一幅未完成的最後一幅肖像立在一個高高的畫架上。自從去年11月他的妹妹伊恩絲觀察到它，它就一直在那裡。書中主人公的身份，在自畫像和喬治•戴爾畫像之間徘徊的自信形象，迄今尚無定論。International exhibitions of Bacon’s paintings have continued throughout the 1990s and beyond. The most prominent of these have been in the Museo Correr, Venice (1993), the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1996), the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin (2000), the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (2001), Museo Serralves, Portugal (2003), the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2003), the Institut Valencia, Valencia (2004), the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (2005), K20 Kunstsammlung, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2006), the Palazzo Reale, Milan (2007), Tate Britain, London (2008) and the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (2009). In 1998 The Estate of Francis Bacon unveiled paintings previously unseen or assumed to have been destroyed, including Study after Velázquez, 1950.培根的作品在國際上的展覽一直持續到20世紀90年代。這些已經在博物館的最突出的跑,威尼斯(1993),蓬皮杜中心,巴黎(1996年),休·萊恩畫廊,都柏林(2000年),明清官窯瓷器展,海牙(2001),博物館Serralves,葡萄牙(2003),藝術歷史博物館,維也納(2003),瓦倫西亞,研究所瓦倫西亞(2004),蘇格蘭國家美術館,愛丁堡(2005),甘藍型Kunstsammlung,北威州,杜塞道夫(2006),宮殿Reale,米蘭(2007),泰特英國美術館,倫敦(2008)和馬德裡普拉多博物館(2009)。1998年，弗朗西斯·培根(Francis Bacon)的遺產公布了一些此前未見或被認為已被銷毀的畫作，包括1950年的《委拉斯開茲之後的研究》(Study after Velazquez, 1950)。The studio, where Bacon had worked for over thirty years of his life, was donated by John Edwards to the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin in 1998. It was reconstructed in the Gallery and opened to the public in May 2001.1998年，約翰·愛德華茲(John Edwards)將該工作室捐贈給都柏林的休·萊恩市政現代藝術畫廊(Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art)，培根在這裡工作了30多年。在美術館進行了重建，並於2001年5月向公眾開放。
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