Finally: Art Worth Your Time

If you are feeling bored by art exhibitions at the moment – Francis Bacon at the Tate Britain should definitely sort you out.

No punches are pulled by the curators of this show as Bacon’s warped psyche unashamedly fills 10 rooms.

And yet I cried during this exhibition. Certain friends have found his portfolio frightening and disturbing – and yet I found it clever and emotional.

A pal of mine described him as a scruffy homosexual and with one look at photos of his studio, you can see why a neat-freak gay guy might say that, but you need to look closer.

Yes he lived the Soho boho life before Soho itself even knew it was gay and liberated. Yes he cavorted in wine bars till the early hours and drank himself silly – but he had a mind and a real talent.

He managed to make my boyfriend, even in his own hungover state, feel like he understood him. Bacon in his earlier work used cubes drawn around people to represent the entrapment people feel on a daily basis. Your job, your goals, the expectations of others – it’s all there on his canvases.

I love the way he chose the mouth to represent emotion. When his work progresses on to portraits of the people who played a key role in his life, sometimes the mouth is the only part of the face which you can pick out. Once you have identified that - you can identify any subject's mood. It’s an incredibly powerful way of tracing a person’s form and feeling. With Bacon’s painted people – start with the mouth and then the rest sort of follows. The angular twists in his faces and the blurred vision of limbs gives an electrifying image of movement, struggle and animation.

Triptychs then start to play a key role in his work. Three huge panels showing the development of an image or scene. My tears fell in the room dedicated to his lover George Dyer, who killed himself before Bacon’s largest solo show in Paris.

The mundane images of Dyer coming home or even sitting on the loo just sum up those normal parts of daily life missed and gone forever after death becomes reality to the ones you love.

Go see Bacon but what’s more enjoy it because, compared to Rothko at the Tate Modern, there’s talent to behold and admire. Plus you know what you are seeing and feel free to interpret something of substance. It’s that good, the Tate Britain team don’t even need to spend months writing lengthy side panels of explanation. The art speaks for itself and what’s more – it actually says something worthy of your attention.