Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol met in 1974. Two giants face to face and in peace, without boxing gloves in between as exhibited by Warhol and Basquiat. They were introduced to David Hockney (who continues to paint and smoke cigars) at a party organized by gallery owner Claude Bernard.
The Dublin painter and the Pittsburgh artist hit it off, expressed mutual admiration, and highlighted similarities that the art world has skirted for several decades: serializations, forms, and a capital interest in photography. A year later, in New York, the two met again at a lunch organized by Lee Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy's sister.
Bacon was overseeing the retrospective that MoMA was about to dedicate to him. At the inauguration, Warhol praised his colleague for her color treatment... and took the opportunity to confess that she copied them in his works. Typical Warhola. Those days, the Irish painter visited the Factory and the American multi-artist photographed him with his polaroid.
The photo, signed and well preserved, can be seen in a display case at the Pilar Ordovás gallery in London where the two totems of world art have once again shaken hands and danced a pasodoble that unites the two creators through the photography, as a final product or as a medium for painting.
The sample is delicious and strange. “What are these two doing together tête a tête?” many people ask), it is complete and, above all, it has an impact. The official title of the exhibition is Endless variations, but the unofficial title could very well be Francis and Andy in the photo booth.
If one is not an expert on Bacon (1909-1992) and Warhol (1928-1987), there are a few indecipherable details, but if the visitor is lucky enough to take the tour with two authorities on both, everything changes. Magazine walked with Pilar Ordovás, a great expert on the generation of Bacon, Freud, R. B. Kitaj and Auerbach (who is still alive and active) and then with an eminence, Martin Harrison, the most important scholar of Francis Bacon and the editor of its catalogue. raisonné.
“Bacon was always associated with artists like Giacometti and I said no, I said Warhol and here they are,” says Harrison, who shows the famous polaroid and has managed to get some of the works that were condemned to table display cabinets to be hung as full-fledged works of art.
Harrison does not forget Hockney on his walk through the rooms and explains his smoking habits and how he refused to let a small balcony disappear in the artists' room at the Royal Academy, which was under construction, because that was his refuge to take four drags on the cigarette. He now smokes all he wants in his Norman house.
In the exhibition, Bacon, the modern master of triptychs, of the agony of human existence, and the transience of life, painted a piece inspired by some photos that he took in a photo booth and that he then painted vertically with its four sides superimposing one on top of the other.
“It is a unique piece, very rare and the one that will give him the idea of triptychs, this is a contradictory format for Bacon, if you can say that,” says Harrison, who knows everything about Bacon. Next to that monumental piece, with an aged and monumental jade green, another piece by Warhol appears, with a light blue background inspired by other ID images that he took one day.
Pilar Ordovás remembers that some of the pieces that can be seen until December 15 have not seen the light of day in decades. Henrietta Moraes's 1969 portrait had not been seen in London for more than 30 years and Warhol's 1963 Five Deaths in Turquoise, a painting from the Death and Disaster series, had never been exhibited in the UK.
One of the great works in the exhibition is Study for a Portrait of John Edwards, painted around 1984 and which represents Bacon's boyfriend and model at that time on a very Warholian bubblegum pink background. “It is a painting – explains Ordovás – that remained in the possession of the painter until his death and had never been seen in London until now.” It is a painting that is associated and dialogues with another on a black background in a kind of triptych, this time by Warhol, which portrays the legendary dancer Merce Cunningham.”
The exhibition in the Savile Row gallery - which also has art, and quite a bit, on Tailor Street - has little secrets barely seen by the admirers of the painter, whose London studio can be seen intact and totally disastrous - in Dublin. There are family photos of Bacon with his lover George Dyer at Roland Gardens in 1967 and photo booth strips of Bacon, Dyer and David Plante in Aix-en-Provence in 1966.
To finish the party for all these immortal characters, none other than Peter Beard appears, the photographer and friend of both who contributes his grain of sand to the exhibition with two snapshots of Warhol.
One title is Birthday, Montauk Point, Long Island (1972/2004) and another Andy Warhol on his birthday (1975/2005). As a whole, the exhibition is exquisite and can be compared to the one that Ordovás presented about his great personal friend Lucien Freud and which was dedicated to horses.
The expo is a box of chocolates, it has just the right size and calories, a long session of Bacon and dramatic Warhol paintings induces dizziness and calls immediately to make an appointment with the therapist.
