Gouache 1929

Curator: Good morning. I'd like to direct your attention to Francis Bacon's early work, a gouache painting from 1929 titled simply, "Gouache." It offers us a glimpse into the artist's formative explorations. Editor: My immediate feeling? A deconstructed stage set, almost aggressively polite. Like a dream about good manners gone slightly wrong. It's fascinatingly unsettling, isn't it? Curator: Precisely. Note how geometric abstraction shapes the composition, with echoes of Art Deco, pulling from ancient Classical Roman architecture: A fragmented column appears near the right side of the image, partially occluded by white beams in the space. Considering the cultural context of 1929, Bacon was living through an era grappling with industrialisation and rapid modernisation, and was about to witness the lead-up to World War II. Editor: You see the column. I keep circling back to that floating square with a fragmented color field behind. It feels like a half-remembered portal. What is behind there and why can I not clearly view it! Perhaps it is a statement on the fragmentation of human existence within rapidly evolving architectural forms of 1920's life? This resonates when considering industrialization themes present across artistic mediums at this point. And notice the interplay of organic and structured elements; the fruit and swirling S-curves provide visual softness, while strong geometric line-work offers rigid structure and angular direction to the piece as a whole. It is an unusual set of subjects juxtaposed. Curator: Indeed. This duality reflects Bacon’s preoccupation with themes of order and chaos, with his choice of imagery providing historical touchpoints through architecture and color. Gouache as a medium lends itself to those softer gradations. Note the earthy palette combined with blues, off whites and pops of strong yellows, oranges and reds - it grounds the artwork, despite the more wild formal properties of its abstraction. Editor: For me, it is like finding order in the midst of… politely controlled pandemonium! The work contains just enough visual cues that point back to the artist's later, darker fixations. You sense, even here, a certain struggle, masked with elegance, with beauty. Ultimately, these initial efforts appear as the first glimmers of something profound struggling to emerge from beyond that oddly placed frame-within-a-frame. I like this earlier style in some respects, perhaps, to see the beginning points of artistic discovery as part of Bacon's style. Curator: It foreshadows the depths yet to come. Thank you. Editor: An unnerving pleasure, always.