frame 31 October 2022
Interview with Sophie Pretorius, archivist of the Estate of Francis Bacon
by Ramona Pulsford
It is our pleasure to bring you an exclusive insight into the life of Francis Bacon through an interview between the newest member of the CHEERIO team Ramona Pulsford and Bacon-expert Sophie Pretorius.
Sophie has worked within The Estate of Francis Bacon for many years. During this time she has written multiple essays that analyse his work and explore his life. This interview delves into the nature of archiving, Bacon's friendship with his doctors, and the removal of the Barry Joule Archive from the Tate.
Ramona Pulsford: You’ve obviously delved deep into Bacon’s artwork, but if you were to zoom out again, how would you sum him up, as an artist, in a sentence or two?
Sophie Pretorius: Wow, going in hard immediately! What I think rings true with most people, and is why he remains so popular, is that he put a huge amount of glamour and value upon suffering and difficulty. His work, instead of trying to ease it, valorises it. It is terribly hopeful. That is what I think his work is about, if one can say his work is about anything.
RP: Could you briefly talk me through the archiving process? What’s so wonderful about your essays is that they’re really rich and full of detail, and I’m assuming that must come from the very careful archiving process.
SP: The brilliant thing about archiving is that it forces you to pay attention, to consider each object materially first, and then detail every level of complexity arising from that: which corner is folded, what colour the pens used to write on it are, whose handwriting it is, if the handwriting changes, if there’s crossing out. It allows you to treat every object like an artwork and to take it seriously; how it needs to be preserved, how is best to store it, how is best to classify it, what a researcher might want to use it for and how to make sure they find it when they need it. I found this very much to be the case when I went through the Barry Joule Archive at the Tate. I decided to start by making my own database cataloguing each item. This process of documenting helped bring out the inconsistencies within the collection. I sometimes get frustrated with the data entry process, because it can be repetitive, and you think, ‘surely it doesn’t matter if I note which side of the paper’s ripped and which isn’t?’ But in the case of the Barry Joule material, I kept recording the tiny details, and all the while thinking ‘this is going to be irrelevant and it is taking me a very long time’. However, something absurd like 60% or 70% of the material had been folded in half once vertically, then unfolded, and then in half horizontally, then unfolded. Which is strange, because if you’re going to fold something to transport it you do it once, and then you do it again on top of the last fold. So, what was present there was completely decorative and systematic folding, implying a batch job, which helped with the eventual attribution of the archive. If it was done on one or two items, who cares? There is probably a silly reason for it. But when a strange detail is present on 600 out of 1000 items, what might be inconsequential with one item becomes significant when multiplied. Everything matters.
RP: What do you enjoy most about the archiving process, and what do you find most difficult?
SP: I’d say the further away the item gets from being Bacon’s, or being directly related to Bacon, the more trying it becomes to archive it. For instance, the press clippings his gallery collected which mention him – specifically the German newspapers clippings – it's unlikely Bacon ever read them, as they were sent to his gallery, and they are mainly notices informing readers of the opening of a show. Although these things almost always end up being useful in the long run, when I can’t immediately see what relevance the item might have to Bacon studies, in general I find that a bit difficult.
My favourite thing is helping researchers when we have the correct material for them. Recently an artist who is asthmatic read my essay on Bacon’s medical records. Her work is Baconic, sketchier and more movement-focused, but in the same area, and she’d always looked at Bacon’s work and felt that his asthma must have informed it. They’ve both lived with chronic asthma, where walking upstairs is sometimes a serious consideration. The feeling of entrapment, the frequent occurrence of asphyxiation and hyperventilation. They both suffered these symptoms, and their practices can be seen as an effort to express this suffering. She is in the process of working that into her practice. I like talking to people about him.
Three Studies of Lucian Freud, The Estate of Francis Bacon (1969)
RP: In your essay about his medical records [A Pathological Painter] Bacon’s heavy drinking, and his refusal to have any kind of therapy, comes across. And there’s all his illnesses: his asthma, that you were talking about, and his high blood pressure. But there’s also, throughout and especially at the end, this sense of his acceptance and his embracing of that – you call it “his robust wellness in himself”. How do you think he achieved that?
SP: It is a funny thing. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone else who is quite like this, who is so obviously unwell, and who paradoxically identifies so much with his robustness. I think for Bacon it has something to do with, as Dr Paul Brass put it, Bacon’s being ‘very keen on medication’. For such a faithless man, such a sceptical man in general, his faith in medication is almost childlike and quite endearing. It was as if he thought, ‘there’s something wrong with me, I will go to the doctor, he will give me a pill, and it will be fine’.
By today’s standards he would be diagnosed with every mood disorder possible and all of them at the same time. Maybe this goes back to your first question about what Bacon is ‘about’ generally, and it’s the reason I think he is so exciting, to me and others. His paintings seem to state, ‘I am falling apart but that is the thrill of it’. I really admire that: faced with oblivion and pain, you celebrate intensity of feeling – instead of rotting in a bedroom, or while rotting in a bedroom! But I think it took a great deal of effort on his part.
RP: Another thing that really stayed with me from that essay was how different Bacon was as a person around his doctors compared with everyone else in his life. Do you think the medical records were key in uncovering that side of him?
SP: Yes definitely. He was so well behaved with his doctors! I can’t think of anyone else, except maybe his family, that got the ideal Bacon: all of the good, none of the bad. Charming, effervescent, generous…on time! But when we got the records, I had no idea they would reveal such a close relationship.
Dr Paul Brass knew the other, ruder Bacon, from newspaper reports, so he knew he wasn’t getting that Bacon. But he felt that he was getting the real Bacon, that all of this grossness was a persona. Maybe Dr Brass was right. I think Bacon did play his mythical unusualness up – to catty art friends, for the press and the like. The truth – as is always the case, which is very boring – lies somewhere in between. I find that a little sad. I think many of us wish the extreme but simple version of events was true, at least some of the time.
RP: If there was a terrible accident and all of Bacon’s work was at risk of being destroyed, but you could save one piece, which would it be?
SP: That’s a difficult one. I think it would probably be Fragment of a Crucifixion, 1950, that’s been my favourite since I first saw it. But now I’m thinking, ‘Well, then that means that’s the only Bacon painting that exists in the world, and people will only have that on which to base their understanding of him’. Even so, I think that that Fragment of a Crucifixion would be a good summation.
There are others that I like just for their colour and composition. Two Figures with a Monkey, 1973 – the one with the bright orange background and the monkey in the foreground and two figures on a hospital bed – that’s one of my favourites. And definitely if I were to own a Bacon, I would want that one. But I don’t think that would be a good one to save, for the sake of history. Because I don’t think it’s his greatest declaration of what he had to say. But Fragment of a Crucifixion is, in my opinion.
Then obviously there’s Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944. But it is three canvases and would be hard to carry in this nightmare world you describe, maybe in this world I am very strong, or have very long arms? I suppose that’s the one most people would choose, because it’s The Bacon, and it’s what made his career, influenced the most people etc. But I’ve seen it so much that I fear, for me, it has lost its potency. It’s a difficult line to walk – if something’s popular, very popular, does it mean it’s bad or does it mean it’s good? Probably it means it’s historically the most important, and it is very powerful…but for me it would be Fragment of a Crucifixion.