"In point of fact, Bacon loved the extremes of waking in the grim discomfort of his living quarters and working in the studio's cramped chaos before appearing for dinner, impeccably groomed, in the hushed opulence of a grand hotel. What fascinated him, he often remarked, was the 'distance' between the two; staying long in either state would have seemed tedious. Like Picasso, he wanted 'to be rich enough to live like a poor person', without the restraints of convention."
Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma , p.246
Bacon seemed liked an obvious choice for full length post, but the more I read about him the more sceptical I get about his eccentric or outsider status. He seems to have been quite calculating in many ways: he never got too drunk, never lost too much money, never got too close to the criminal underworld. He outlived most of the Soho crowd and died a rich man. Still the myth of Bacon now has a life of its own thanks particularly to the several documentary he appeared on and Love is the Devil. As a teenager interested in modern art, he was exactly how you wanted an artist to be. In an interview somewhere Jenny Saville says that as an adolescent she "wanted her life to be like Bacon's'". He was just the kind of adult your parents would not invite round for dinner.
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