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Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Quotes

Former Lord Chancellor

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Famous Francis Bacon Quotes

“My painting is not violent; it’s life that is violent. I have endured physical violence, I have even had my teeth broken. Sexuality, human emotion, everyday life, personal humiliation (you only have to watch television)—violence is part of human nature. Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. You are born, you fuck, you die. What could be more violent than that?”

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Author:Francis Bacon
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“I think that one of the things is that, if you are going to decide to be a painter, you have got to decide that you are not going to be afraid of making a fool of yourself. I think another thing is to be able to find subjects which really absorb you to try and do. I feel that without a subject you automatically go back into decoration because you haven't got the subject which is always eating into you to bring it back - and the greatest art always returns you to the vulnerability of the human situation.”

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Book:Francis Bacon: Retrospektive
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“Great art is deeply ordered. Even if within the order there may be enormously instinctive and accidental things, nevertheless they come out of a desire for ordering and for returning fact onto the nervous system in a more violent way.”

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Book:Francis Bacon, recent paintings, 1968-1974: March 20-Jun 29, 1975, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York : [catalog].
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“Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils”

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Book:Francis Bacon: The Papal Portraits of 1953
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