Consumer Good and Evil
Francis Bacon was an artist who not only fascinates but also contradicts. Known for his frivolous ways, Bacon was born in Dublin in the year of 1909, October 28th to Edward Anthony Mortimer Bacon and Winifred Bacon. The Bacon family was also associated with the great writer Sir Francis Bacon. The eldest son among the five children, Francis Bacon and his siblings often witness his ex-militant father’s emotional outbursts and conflicts with their mother. During the early 1914s, Edward Bacon moved his family to London after the war as he took up a job in the war office. Being the sickly child, Francis Bacon was privately tutored as he was not able to attend the school regularly due to his poor health and this disappointed his father. Edward Bacon, being the military man he was, was disappointed in his eldest son’s fragility, thus set off a series of misfortunes as he sent Francis Bacon to work in the horse stable he owned. Bacon’s earliest exposure to violence was the encounters with his father. Edward Bacon was disgusted with his son’s sexual orientation; having caught him engaging in sexual activities with the horse boys as well as witnessing Francis Bacon dressing up in his mother’s dress in front of a mirror. This resulted in the eventual strain between both father and son and this was worsened as Francis Bacon was subsequently chased out of the household. Francis Bacon sought refuge at his maternal grandmother’s place after his expel and faced more violence during this period of his life more than one could ever handled. Due to his grandmother’s marriage to a police commissioner, Francis Bacon lived in a sandbagged house during the war time where the family was constantly under life endangering threats. During 1927-1928, Francis Bacon visited Berlin and was once again introduced to more aggression in the vibrant and unsettling city. With the accumulation of these past, Francis Bacon’s threshold for violence seemingly increased as he stepped into adulthood as he went through more wrenching relationships one after another with his various boyfriends which often ended up tragically. One such example includes the death of his lover, George Dryer who committed suicide on the opening day of Francis Bacon’s retrospective in Paris. Followed by his lover’s death, Francis Bacon took on a depressing style and began painting various paintings depicting George Dryer’s last days.