FB I think I tend to destroy the better paintings, or those that have been better to a certain extent. I try and take them further, and they lose all their qualities, and they lose everything. I think I would say that I tend to destroy all the better paintings.
DS Can you never get it back once it’s gone over the top?
FB Not now, and less and less. As the way I work is totally, now, accidental, and becomes more and more accidental, and doesn’t seem to behave, as it were, unless it is accidental, how can I recreate an accident? It’s almost an impossible thing to do.
DS But you might get another accident on the same canvas.
FB One might get another accident, bit it would never be quite the same. This is the thing that can probably happen only in oil paint, because it is so subtle that one tone, one piece of paint, that moves one thing into another completely chances the implications of the image.
DS you wouldn’t get back what you’d lost but you might get something else. Why, then, do you tend to destroy rather than work on? Why do you prefer to begin again on another canvas?
FB Because sometimes it disappears completely and the canvas becomes completely clogged, and there’s too much paint on it – just a technical thing, too much paint, and one just can’t go on.
DS Is it because of the particular texture of the paint?
FB I work between thick and thin paint. Parts of it are very thin and parts of it are very thick. And it just becomes clogged, and then you start to put on illustrational paint.
DS What makes you do that?
FB Can you analyze the difference, in fact, between paint which conveys directly and paint which conveys through illustration? This is a very, very difficult problem to put into words. It is something to do with instinct. It’s a very close and difficult thing to know why some paint comes across directly onto the nervous system and other paint tells you a story in a long diatribe through the brain.
DS Have you managed to paint any pictures in which you did go on and the paint got thick and you still pulled them through?
FB I have, yes. There was one early one of head against curtains…
DS But you don’t often manage to work on a painting as long as that?
FB No. But now I find I can work more on paintings. And I hope to be able to have the first instinctive kind of basic thing and then to be able to be able to work on almost directly, as though one was painting a new picture. I’ve been trying to work that way recently. And I think there are all sorts of possibilities in working directly first and then afterwards bringing this thing that has happened by accident to a much further point by will.
If this is helpful for you - check out the audio recording of Bacon on the element of chance in his work in this page on the BBC website.
What does FB mean when says "illustrational paint" and "paint which conveys through illustration"?
ReplyDeleteAlso, when you are talking about texture of paint on canvas, is that a distinction that can only be observed when you are looking at a painting in person? How does the texture translate when you are looking at a photograph of a painting?