Study for a portrait of John Edwards 1989

Curator: Welcome. The artwork before you is Francis Bacon’s “Study for a portrait of John Edwards,” painted in 1989. Editor: Yikes. He looks…seasick. All purples and pinks swallowed by the dark, like he's mid-dissolve into the void. Curator: Bacon had a rather tumultuous life marked by anxiety. This is just after his partner's death; this canvas exemplifies a turn to raw human vulnerability amidst political upheaval, echoing broader themes of societal decay within late Modernism. Editor: Political upheaval, decay, sure, but all I see is a man swallowed by loneliness. Notice how the brushstrokes around the face seem almost frantic, like Bacon was trying to trap something that was already slipping away. What kind of vulnerability he displays depends on each person, of course, as it's barely a defined human being, right? Curator: True. It is a study. A representation filtered through Bacon’s experience of a complex sitter. Edwards, you may know, was Bacon’s close friend and heir. One could see how he depicts, and imagines the inner life that concerns it: anxiety. Editor: I can almost feel the grit of the oil paint on my fingertips. The slickness that reflects and suggests so much pain in such an unfinished face... almost animalistic, in its raw being. Curator: Bacon's technique indeed creates this sense of rawness; smearing the paint allows him to construct and deconstruct at once. His distortion suggests more about his perception, rather than strict observation. We might ask what anxieties are at play when this painting was produced. Editor: Perhaps we are witnessing something truly terrible. A ghost portrait of his own inner fears made manifest—or even the way death stares back, eventually... and it is a good, worthy painting of this moment and emotion. Curator: It certainly provides a powerful statement on the psychological effects of grief and the burden of memory during that cultural and political moment. A truly remarkable piece from that moment. Editor: Grief certainly gives way to this masterpiece, a worthy expression indeed. A little morbid for my taste, perhaps but… then again, maybe it has more to offer if this morbid reflection allows the heart to understand human fear more easily.