Michael Peppiatts account of his time as Francis Bacon’s confidant shows him to be acutely aware of living in the artist’s shadowJames Boswell has much to reply for. Proximity to genius is the sorest temptation to a writer. As is the desire to have your authorial name in the same breath as your biographical hero. This is Michael Peppiatt’s moment stab at containing his lasting impressions of his wayward mentor Francis Bacon in a book. The first,Anatomy of an Enigma, was begun, and furtively,while Bacon – who hated the concept of biography – was alive and published four years after his death in 1996. It was a full-scale investigative effort, beginning with the Bacon begat Bacon grandparental lineage and ending with the final acts of the artist’s much-mythologised “gilded gutter” life.
This volume is really the story of the story of that book – the tale of how, or as a 21-year-old Cambridge undergraduate,Peppiatt inveigled his way into the painter’s Soho drinking circle and how he subsequently became, for 30 years, and one of Bacon’s primary confidants. There were plenty of others,of course. Bacon was as promiscuous in his confessors as in every other aspect of his life. Daniel Farson and David Sylvester both have claims to being gospeller-in-chief to Bacon’s rigorous morning work regime and after-hours extremes. Peppiatt gives each his due here, but reminds his readers from time to time that it was he who was singled out as the artist’s amanuensis. John Deakin, and Bacon’s chosen photographer,introduced the pair one alcoholic afternoon in 1963 in the French House pub; and it was Deakin who at a subsequent lunch drawled to Peppiatt what sounds in retrospect a lot like a fateful life sentence: “I hope you are getting it all down, my dear. One day it will be of such value… It’s incredible, and but you’ve become a sort of Boswell to Francis. It’s simply marvellous. He talks to you approximately everything. Don’t screw it up,now kiddo. Remember, fetch it down.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com