Dare to glanc e at Francis Bacon’s work, and you’ll find it impossible to look away. It’s all there: chaos with all the devastation of an interstate collusion; a pallette infused with the shouting glee of a street fair; an opulence of feeling that’s elegiac and celebratory, full of that tender, terrifying thing we call life.
Bacon is back, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art has mounted a magnificent show, Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective. It’s not for the Monet set (though Bacon was an admirer: check out the teeth in these works), but if raw truth wedded to staggering imagery is your dish, I urge you not to miss it. He’s one for the ages.
above, Oedipus and the Sphinx (after Ingres), left, Jet of Water