It was a great pleasure to conceptualise and host the end-term conference of the Marbach Weimar Wolfenbüttel Research Association at Klassik Stiftung Weimar last week (16/17 February). We asked Is digital better? and discussed this question with colleagues from the international community of digital collection research. Now on to the conference proceedings! WATCH THAT SPACE
The Burlington Magazine just published my review of Denis Wirth-Miller: Landscapes and Beasts at Firstsite in Colchester. Wirth-Miller was Francis Bacon‘s best friend, but does this show help him escape Bacon’s shadow?
Earlier this year the The Royal Academy of Arts in London staged the exhibition Francis Bacon: Man and Beast. But what did we really learn about Bacon’s relationship to animals? Read my review in the December issue of Kunstchronik.
It was a great pleasure to open the exhibition “Francis Bacon – In the Mirror of Photography” at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen last week. The exhibition, curated by myself and Christian Spies, includes three paintings by Francis Bacon, among them their newly acquired Turning Figure, 1963, and their photographic sources, for example from Picture Post and Lilliput magazine. I presented a lecture to mark the occassion.
My book Francis Bacon – In the Mirror of Photography. Collecting, Preparatory Practice and Painting has been reviewed in Peter Truschner’s Fotolot (Perlentaucher. Online Kulturmagazin). You can read it here: https://lnkd.in/eWqzVduE
It was great to present two lectures on Francis Bacon’s use of photographic sources at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, where Bacon’s studio material is held today.
Francis Bacon – In the Mirror of Photography, Public Lecture, 24 July 2022 and Coffee Conversation, 27 July 2022
Hear me talk about my research on Francis Bacon’s pictorial sources on The Estate of Francis Bacon’s official youtube channel: video talk
My book Francis Bacon – In the Mirror of Photography. Collecting, Preparatory Practice and Painting is now available from a variety of book sellers including Amazon, Foyles, Hugendubel and Dussmann.
Yves Peyré’s book Francis Bacon ou La mesure de l’excès delivers a passionate, personal view on the artist. I reviewed it for REVUE REGARDS CROISÉS.
You can read it here
I am very proud that my book Francis Bacon – In the Mirror of Photography. Collecting, Preparatory Practice and Painting was published by De Gruyter in May 2022. It is based on my PhD research and thus marks the end of a long and exciting journey.
Francis Bacon consistently and deliberately based his paintings on the photographic material he collected in his studios, most famously so in the last one at 7 Reece Mews, London, for this purpose. Francis Bacon – In the Mirror of Photography brings together Bacon’s pictorial springboards for the first time and delineates and interprets recurring patterns and methods, but also highlights the limitations of Bacon’s interest in photography.
Francis Bacon – In the Mirror of Photography was favourably reviewed in Fotolot (October 2022), The Burlington Magazine (March 2023, Vol. 165 | No. 1440), The British Art Journal (Vol. 23, No.2, Autumn 2022) and by Prof. Olaf Peters Aus dem Regal gezogen. It won the Offermann-Hergarten Award (University of Cologne) and the gold medal at DeutscherFotobuchpreis 2023 (German Photo Book Award) at Internationales Festival Fotografischer Bilder.
As part of the international MWW-Summer School 2021 ‘Collection Spaces – Räume des Sammelns’, I will be presenting the lecture ‘‘Das Goethehaus ist ziemlich mitgenommen‘ – Lee Millers Blick auf Buchenwald und Weimar’ at the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation on 25 August 2021. This is a unique opportunity to discuss Lee Miller’s photographs of the liberation of the concentration camp at the site where they were taken.
Katharina Guenther 