FRANCIS BACON

There is a photo from 1932 taken in Paris. It shows a young interior designer. He is inspired by Picasso. He designs tables with interrupted circles of brass. He wears dark high-waisted trousers, adjusted on the side, cufflinks, and a black knit tie, slightly askew. His name is Francis Bacon.

14 years later, he has begun to erase this part of his life. He is a British painter, of flesh, violence, and speed. Gilles Deleuze will call his method a ‘logic of sensation’; Michel Leiris, a ‘brutality of fact.’ Painting (1946) shows a sitting figure with half a head, teeth and blood exposed. A large stripped carcass forms the background, only obstructed by an open black umbrella. But at the bottom of the canvas is a large table with an interrupted circle of brass. And on the figure: a black suit, a white collar, a black tie.

The British antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs recalls: ‘Mrs Vreeland was always going on about the things a girl could do with a scarf. Well, Francis had thought about all of those long before she had, I’m sure. Tried them out. Seen what worked.’

With a first job in a clothing shop for women on London’s Poland Street, Bacon developed a style, and a uniform. A grey suit, an unbuttoned tailored blue or white shirt, a black knit tie. Less formal, a cashmere sweater, black and thin or beige and thick -
always with its sleeves rolled up. A knitted polo. A trench-coat with shoulder-straps. To the critic Michael Peppiatt, he declared wanting to ‘look ordinary, but better than ordinary.’ On his feet, for many years, desert boots. He had grown up in the Irish countryside.

As success came, he added a watch - first to his figures, then to his wrist: thin and golden in dial and strap at first; a Rolex GMT Pepsi soon after. Evenings meant Soho which meant leather: soft and tight, with a cashmere turtleneck on bare skin and slim trousers. Soon, a trench-coat. Late, a vinyl trench-coat.

He painted no fabric more than flannel, adding dust to the paint. ‘I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as a medium for accident and chance.’ In 1956, the year of a self-portrait in a dark single-breasted suit and black lace-up boots, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit was released in British theaters.

Even then, double-breasted suits, especially those made on Savile Row were kept for wear in France. In the 1980s, he had his lover’s Anderson & Sheppard suit copied, but never wore it. In 1981, he bought a suit from Lanvin. In the last two decades of his life, the suits lost their herringbone; the shirts, their stripes.
With his last lover, the 80 year old painter played dress-up, matching in dark suits and ‘shiny black ankle boots, which they show off to each other with a smile as if they are sharing a private joke.’

The daughter of his close friend Lucian Freud declared: ‘Francis Bacon wore only a few looks but it was as if he had completely invented style - as though there was no such thing as style until he wore a black turtleneck, and a mac.’

‘“I’ve always liked that about the French,” says Francis. “They’re much clearer about things than the English.”’