THE INSTALLATION OF FRANCIS BACON’S STUDIO IN THE HUGH
LANE GALLERY IN DUBLIN AND THE MUSEUM EXPERIENCE
Francis Bacon (1909-1992) was the ‘most
prolific Irish artist of the twentieth century[1]’,
according to Barbara Dawson, director of the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. He
left Ireland when he was 16 years old and never returned. He moved to 7 Reece
Mews in South Kensington in London in 1961 and lived there until his death in
1992. John Edwards, his closest friend and confidant was the heir to his
estate, valued at nearly $17 million[2]. Bacon
had many different studios throughout his artistic life, in Berlin and Paris;
but it was when he acquired his studio in 7 Reece Mews in London when he
entered his most highly productive period. It was in his own private studio
that he realised some of the greatest paintings of the twentieth century[3]. He knew
instantly when he came to 7 Reece Mews that he would be able to work there,
which he did for 30 years.
7 Reece Mews, South Kensington.
Untidy, messy chaotic, disorderly are all
adjectives that have been used to describe Bacon’s Studio in London or else it
is not uncommon to hear; ‘what a mess![4]’. The
contents of his studio, over 7,500 items that were found, have been entered
carefully into a database contained in the Hugh Lane Gallery. Many objects that
the artist used for creative inspiration lay for years, sometimes untouched,
haphazardly on the floor and in piles all over his studio. Such items include
books, papers, and photographs, in boxes and pinned to the walls, newspaper
clippings, drawings, magazines, books, paint brushes, paint-crusted tin can
paint holders, half-finished and lashed canvasses on the floor, easels, and
furniture like his cracked circular mirror and the rectangular table with 3ft
of clutter piled on top in a disorganised heap. Amid all this untidiness and
chaos, he could find order and inspiration for his art. ‘His studio is like
walking into the artist’s head […] like walking into a Later Dai Egyptian tomb[5]’. He
once stated that ‘this mess here around me is rather like my mind, it may be a
good image of what goes on inside me, that’s what it’s like, my life is like
that[6]’. He
called it a ‘dump’; he used plaster on the walls which Bacon used as his
palette[7]. The ambience
and atmosphere of the place was important to bacon; ‘I am influenced by places,
by the atmosphere of a room[8].
John Edwards, along with Brian Clarke,
Bacon’s executor, offered the studio of Reece Mews to Dublin City Gallery, The
Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, not far from where the artist was born; in 63
Lower Baggot Street. The relocated studio opened to the public in 2001. It was
initially offered by John Edwards to the Tate Gallery in London but they
initially refused to respond to the offer and they subsequently turned down the
gift; which is staggering particularly as the gallery was one of Bacon’s great
patrons, holding two exhibitions of his work during his life time[9]. It was
inevitable at this stage that the studio should be ‘lost’ to the British
nations. Britain’s loss was Ireland’s gain. It seems even more apparent from
this that the studio is in its rightful place, for the benefit and appreciation
of the Irish people, an opinion also held by Barbara Dawson, the director of
the Hugh Lane Gallery; # Dublin is the appropriate destination for the studio[10]’. Thus, the studio was donated to the Hugh Lane
Gallery in 1998 and took 3 years to reconstruct
in the gallery. A team of archaeologists and art experts and
conservationists worked, led by conservator Mary McGrath, when moving the
studio to Dublin, took every precaution with every detail to be able to
faithfully re-create the space intact within the Hugh Lane Gallery. Moving
every single object was a complicated task; thousands of objects all randomly
arranged had be surveyed, tagged, numbered and photographed so that they could
be reconstituted in Dublin in their exact position. ‘This was an exercise in
precision removal’, said Mary McGrath[11].
The project had to be down within two weeks
so the team had to work in close quarters, recording, sketching and analysing
all the material in his studio. The work was forensic and precise and much
effort was made to accurately record every item and its position in the studio.
The studio was transplanted and reassembled, every paintbrush and every speck
of dust, along with the walls, the floorboards, the door, the window and the
staircase. The walls and the door have become art works in themselves. It is
possible to find art in everything material; the problem is discovering its
true meaning. The door of Bacon’s Reece Mews studio is probably the best-known
image of the artist’s studio. Bacon tested paints on the door and the walls of
the studio. He jokingly referred to these as his only abstract paintings. Bacon
also printed corduroy and other fabrics into this wet paint presumably to apply
to his paintings. The fact that both the front and back door have paint
accretions would indicate that Bacon sometimes painted with the door open and
also with it closed. The walls and the door are also an important source of
artistic material in learning more about the artist’s methods and techniques.
He never attended any art schools thus was able to develop his own artistic
style and techniques through trial and error, without the constraints of
artistic rules and conventions.
There has been ample controversy over the
donation of the studio but the team involved in the project have no regrets[12]. They
had to act fast before bureaucracy made it impossible to carry out the work and
the shipment of the studio to Dublin. They team also had to act fast as someone
had bought the Mews and was ready carry out extensive redevelopment work to
turn it into a Batchelor pad. The
project, which cost around £1.6 million[13], was
done with utmost care and precision and thanks to the dedication of the Irish
team; the material and the studio will remain preserved intact and will provide
students and 1scholars with a centre and archive for academic research. Brian
Clarke stated that it ‘unique in the art world to have such a complete archive,
which has been done with such thoroughness[14]’.
Dublin was his place of origin but London was where he could live out his
bohemian lifestyle frequenting the bars of Soho. Bacon would have been a social
outcast and even been alienated by Irish society because of his homosexuality,
thus London was best suited to him, even though he is very much an Irish
artist. He was simply another of Ireland’s exiles. Bacon Jokingly remarked that
he’d never come back to Dublin until he was dead[15]. Maybe
this justifies the argument that the studio is now in its rightful place, back
where the artist was born. One can only speculate as to whether Bacon would
have embraced the project but maybe this was what he would have wanted and one
way of interpreting what he meant by returning to Dublin after his death. He
was an optimistic, open character; thus it is not difficult to come to the
conclusion that he would have considered the project to be a great venture; if
not, he would possibly have been amused.
His studio was an area of intense
creativity, which is evident from a visit to the studio at the gallery. It is
certainly a unique experience which is difficult to describe. At first glance,
the studio looks like a teenager’s bedroom but then putting the space in
context, as an artist’s studio, it becomes more than just a chaotic, messy
space. It is easier to understand the necessity for things and objects to be
piled together. Bacon needed images and objects as inspiration for his work. It
is true to say that there is no opportunity for creativity in an empty, bare
space. An artist like Bacon needed material objects around him to work. He said
that he worked better in chaos; ‘chaos suggests images to me[16]’. He
couldn’t have been bothered to have cleaned it up he once stated; all he wanted
to do was work in peace and quiet in an area full of plenty of creativity. He took inspiration from the clutter and
chaos. Bacon himself once wrote that his studio was the one place he could work
because he could not work in places that were too tidy[17]. The
studio contained the debris of his life as well as the stimulus for his art[18]. Bacon
was able to find what he needed in the chaos of his studio. He recognised the
studio reflected his life[19]. The
studio holds the inner most thoughts and emotions of the artist, as well as his
secrets. Francis Bacon’s artistic secrets were revealed as soon as the team of
archaeologists and conservationists unveiled the material in his studio for the
first time. Francis bacon’s studio was a ‘studio of accumulation[20]’. The
excessive mess had a reassuring function for the artist. It was a ‘womb’ within
which he could work, perhaps signified in his paintings by the skeletal cubes
which trapped many of his figures[21].
Photography played a major role in Bacon’s
work, and almost one quarter of the material found in his studio is of a
photographic nature. Many of these photographs are of Bacon, his friends and
various other subjects. During his
lifetime, Bacon accepted only a handful of commissions. From the early 1960’s,
he chose his closest friends as sitters, preferring to work not from life but
from their photographs. The written word was a major influence on his work.
Reading material, like books and magazines provided him with an abundance of
ideas for his art. Ironically, he wasn’t interested in possessions and material
wealth. His dwelling was modestly furnished with stairs leading to the first
floor which had his studio on the immediate left, a toilet, his bedroom and his
kitchen-bathroom which had a bath-tub. Even when he was at the very height of
his celebrity and wealth, this was how he lived.
Lastly, it is important to discuss the way
the studio is displayed in the Hugh Lane Gallery and the relationship between
Francis Bacon’s studio as a domestic space and as an object of art in a museum.
The gallery has built a box around the studio, with two glass-walled viewing
sites as well as a spyhole in which the material is magnified. There are
printed quotes on the walls of the gallery as the viewer enters the space in
which the studio is contained. Visitors can only view the studio by looking
through the glass panels. As discussed previously, Bacon’s studio tells us a
lot about his personality and his art work. The staircase was installed into
the floor, covered over with a sheet of glass so one can get a sense of where
the studio was exactly on the first floor. There is a short video documentary
fir the visitor to view before viewing the studio. There is a sombre feeling to
Francis Bacons’ studio in the Hugh Lane Gallery. The light is sombre, as well
as the ambience.
An interesting treatise on where art is
made and where art is displayed and the artist’s studio with in a museum or
gallery environment is Brian O’ Doherty’s
Studio and Cube (1976) and republished in 1999 as Inside the White Cube:
The Ideology of the Gallery Space. He was the first to explicitly confront a
particular crisis in post- war art as he sought to examine the assumptions on
which the modern commercial and museum gallery were based. Concerned with the
complex and sophisticated relationship between economics, social context, and
aesthetic as represented in the contested space of the art gallery, he raises
the question of how artists must construct their work in relation to the
gallery space and system.
He argues that the idea of the artist’s
studio as a subject of examination and contemplation is a nineteenth century
phenomenon[22].
This is the space where art is made becomes the subject of art in itself. He explores the relationship between where
art is made and where art is displayed in great detail. The museum or gallery
is intended to display the finished piece of art whereas the art work is a work
in progress in the studio and can be altered so long as it remains there. By
placing the studio in a gallery, both are forced to coincide, the process of
creativity of art and its final resting place is merged together. The meaning
of the studio alters in a museum environment; the artist is no longer present in
the space; it is not a habited lived in space anymore. It is an object of study
and analysis. Time stands still in the studio when it is moved from a domestic
environment to a gallery space. The artist’s personal a private space becomes
public and the sources of his artistic inspiration are revealed.
Art displayed in a gallery is unable to
tell the story of the process of creation. The function of the studio is
radically different to that of the museum gallery. The studio is where art is
created; the gallery is where art is displayed. It is impossible to fully
understand the artist’s intention without knowing what his inspiration and
sources were for his work. As we have seen in the case of Francis Bacons’
studio, it revealed a lot of information about him and his artistic process and
techniques. Studios, as Lowell Nesbitt (a painter, draughtsman, printmakers and
sculptor, b.1933-d.1993) believed were ‘portraits of the artists without their
faces and bodies[23]’.
In 1964, Lucas Samaras (1936- ) an artist,
born in Greece, transferred the contents of his studio-bedroom from his New
Jersey address to the Green Gallery on East Gallery on East 57th
Street in New York City. Like Bacon’s studio, it now resides within a space
where art is displayed thus becoming an art work within a gallery as opposed to
a space where art is created[24]’. The
meaning of art changes with the transition from studio to museum. Visitors to
the museum or gallery bring a new element into the art work, a critical
approach is now taken, not just aesthetical enjoyment. When visitors view the
studio in a museum context, one still expects to see the artist at work but
instead, there is a sense of desolation and emptiness within. With Bacon’s
studio, the transience of life is evident. The artist is no longer living, it
is only through his art work that he has been immortalised. There is a huge
sense of loss felt, it is like losing a loved one and the only thing that
remains of their being is material objects. He is quite violent when he was
painting, thus the studio that was once full of life is now lifeless and stuck
in time.
The artist’s studio is an interchangeable
space, the artist can change many aspects of his/her studio to suit their work
and methods whereas the artist cannot choose the lighting or the interior space
of the gallery/museum in which the art work is displayed after it leaves the
studio. The lighting of the studio differs t that of a museum. The lighting in
a museum can be problematic for some works of art. It can alter the intended
finished result of the picture, for example, the mood or the emotion of the
painting can be lost if the lighting in the space is incompatible with it. In
the studio, there is a possibility of natural light; in the museum setting, the
unchanging, un-natural light has a huge impact on the art works. It can alter
it in a negative way. In the museum
environment, the art work is compacted together with other works of art from
other artists. The museum experience can be over-whelming. There is sometimes
too much to take in. the art work cannot be fully contemplated because it does
not stand in isolation. It is usually studied in the context of a museum
environment and positioned within a certain genre of paintings.
The study of museums and the way people
react within a museum space cannot be complete without discussing the notion of
Phenomenology. It is the study of structures of various types of experiences,
experienced from the subjective or the first-person point of view, ranging from
perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire and volition to
bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activity, including linguistic
activity. The structure of these forms of experience typically involves what
Husserl called ‘intentionality’, that is, the directedness of experiences
toward things in the world, the property of consciousness that it is
consciousness of or about something[25].
Museums are required to have an
understanding of visitor experience of visiting a museum. An article entitled;
The Museum environment and the visitor experience outlines research that
focuses on academic sources on visitor studies. It outlines three approaches;
the social, the cognitive and the environmental perspective which have been
applied to studies of museum visitor behaviour, it deals with the need for
museums to have an understanding if the visitors experience in a museum as
visitors bring a wide range of interpretations to the reading of displays and
objects. It is important for museums to think about how they will present
themselves and exhibitions and how they will effectively communicate
information to a wide range of the public. Museums are a physical environment
which needs to stimulate interest and engagement form the public.
The Hugh Lane Gallery would have had to
take great care in the way in which they were to display the studio and the
staircase that were taken from 7 Reece Mews. Whether the re-installation of the
studio was the right thing or the wrong thing to do; it has undoubtedly been a
huge success in Ireland. Bacon, who had a flair for words and was renowned for
his clever sayings suggest he would have appreciated the comment ‘bringing home
the Bacon’ made on the moving of his studio to Ireland very amusing[26].
Ireland was without doubt proud to have brought home the Bacon.
[2] The New York Times: ‘John Edwards, 53, Francis Bacon Confidant’ by
Alan Riding, March 7, 2003.
[3] A terrible beauty <http;//www.hughlane.ie/a-terrible-beauty-interviews
[4] The New York Times, August 16, 2001; Arts Abroad; A Dublin Diorama
Reveals a very untidy Francis Bacon’ by Brian Lavery
[5] Quote by Barbara Dawson <http;//www.hughlane.ie/a-terrible-beauty-interviews>
[6] http;//www.universitytimes.ie/2012/04/02/francis-bacon-studio-dublin-city-gallery-review/
[7] BBC News, Entertainment: Arts, 22 May 2001; Bacon’s studio
re-created in Dublin ‘ by Louise Williams in Dublin.
[8] Geordie Greig, Francis Bacon’s Studio leaves town’, Sunday Times,
30 August 1998.
[9] Geordie Greig, Francis Bacon’s Studio leaves town’, Sunday Times,
30 August 1998
[10] Ibid
[11] Ibid
[12] BBC News, Entertainment: Arts, 22 May 2001; Bacon’s studio
re-created in Dublin ‘ by Louise Williams in Dublin.
[13] Ireland Correspondent: Studio Mess recreated for £1.6m by Audrey
Magee
[14] BBC News, Entertainment: Arts, 22 May 2001; Bacon’s studio
re-created in Dublin ‘ by Louise Williams in Dublin.
[15] The New York Times: A Dublin Diorama Reveals a very untidy Francis
Bacon’ by Brian Lavery. August 16, 2001; Arts Abroad
[16] UCD Scholarcast, series 2: (Autumn 2008), Archaeologies of Art@
Papers from the sixth World Archaeological Congress, Series Editor: Ian
Russell, ‘Dust and Debitage: An Archaeology of Francis Bacon’s Studio’ by Blaze
O’ Connor
[17] BBC News, Entertainment: Arts, 22 May 2001; Bacon’s studio
re-created in Dublin ‘by Louise Williams in Dublin.
[18] Geordie Greig, Francis Bacon’s Studio leaves town’, Sunday Times,
30 August 1998
[19] Ibid
[20] Studio and Cube: on the relationship between where art is made and
where art is displayed, Brian O’ Doherty, Princeton Architectural Press,
2008.p.20
[21] Studio and Cube: on the relationship between where art is made and
where art is displayed, Brian O’ Doherty, Princeton Architectural Press, 2008,
p.21
[22] Studio and Cube: on the relationship between where art is made and
where art is displayed, Brian O’ Doherty, Princeton Architectural Press, 2008,
p.11
[23] Studio and Cube: on the relationship between where art is made and
where art is displayed, Brian O’ Doherty, Princeton Architectural Press, 2008,
p.12
[24] Ibid, p.4
[25] Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, First published Sun Nov
16,2003; substantive revision Mon July 28, 2008 <
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/>
[26] Geordie Greig, Francis Bacon’s Studio leaves town’, Sunday Times, 30
August 1998.
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