Constructions of Homosexuality in the Art of Francis Bacon

Abstract

In this article, I contextualise Bacon’s representations of homosexuality — that is, same-sex relations between men. The male nude made its appearance in Bacon’s work in the early 1950s, a time when the nude was not a popular subject in painting and when, perhaps more critically, homosexuality was illegal in Britain. Other British contemporary homosexual artists, such as Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, steered clear of representing homosexuality, whilst others, such as Keith Vaughan, depicted homosexuality in their art in an ambiguous and diffuse fashion, often with recourse to the homoerotic. Vaughan’s studies of men exercising focused on the strength and virility of the male nude, and were erotically charged without being overtly sexual. In contrast, Bacon chose to be more explicit in his depictions. He did not simply allude to, but pointed to the homosexual act of copulation. Given that Bacon was painting at a time before the legalisation of homosexuality, how can these images be explained and what was Bacon attempting to do? His representations of the homoerotic and homosexual convey social attitudes of the time and are important constructions and mediations of homosexual desire. I explain my motivations by drawing on Bacon’s cultural and theoretical background. What is evident is that there is not one homogeneous interpretation of Bacon’s depiction of homosexuality, but multiple readings, which are interdisciplinary. His depictions can be explained with recourse to his biography, art historical influences, political activism and his existential awareness of death. I also demonstrate how changes in the political landscape affected Bacon’s portrayals in the delineation of what I describe as four thematic phases in Bacon’s art.

Acknowledgement

I am very grateful to an anonymous referee for this journal for their invaluable comments.

Notes

1. Although it should be noted that many of his portraits of Henrietta Moraes were sexually enticing.

2. Such as Farson (1994) and Peppiatt (1997).

3. However, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in the more theoretical aspects of sexuality in Bacon’s paintings, as evidenced in Ofield (2001, 2008) and Hornsey (2007).

4. In Lost Gay Novels, Anthony Slide (2003) recoups 50 early twentieth-century American novels with gay themes or characters, most of which would not have been considered as gay at the time, and discusses their homosexual aspects, including characterisation and themes.

5. For an excellent study of how ‘the closet’ functioned to give voice to a range of homosexual desires, see David (1997).

6. ‘Rough trade’ or ‘a bit of rough’ was used to describe working-class masculinised men who had sex with other men, and was central to the homosexual experience (David 1997, p. 43).

7. The proliferation of papal images in the 1950s can be interpreted as the revenge that Bacon took on a figure who opposed his sexual and cultural identity (as an English Protestant, he represented the minority).

8. Bacon’s father sent Bacon to Berlin under the chaperone of a close friend, who was given the honorary title of ‘uncle’, in an attempt to ‘straighten up’ his son. The irony is that the trip to Berlin encouraged Bacon’s homosexual tendencies.

9. It is worth adding that there was variation in the understanding of these terms.

10. Bacon remarked to Sylvester that he often found it difficult to separate out the influences that he gained from both: ‘Actually, Michelangelo and Muybridge are mixed up in my mind together, and so I perhaps could learn about positions from Muybridge and learn about the ampleness and grandeur of form from Michelangelo, and it would be very difficult for me to disentangle the influence of Muybridge and the influence of Michelangelo’ (Sylvester 1993, p. 114).

11. See Žižek’s (2000, pp. 5ff.) analysis of Casablanca (1942) in The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime for a study of split readings in the film.

12. However, it is worth adding that Bacon’s interiors are notoriously stark and neutral. They have been described as looking like hotel rooms. In that respect, this is not a special case.

13. The gaze is a trope used in the visual arts to refer to the distribution of power across a heterosexist axis.