British writer Max Porter reflects on the enduring power of Francis Bacon’s paintings and the deeply personal and unsettling experience of engaging with his work.
Speaking in front of a Bacon painting, Porter delves into the complexity of viewing Bacon’s art, questioning the nature of perception, memory, and the passage of time: “One of the things I’ve tried to do in prose is recreate what’s happening in the mind of the viewer when you encounter a work of art like this,” Porter explains, describing his approach to capturing the speed and dissonance of thought in writing, not least in his novel ‘The Death of Francis Bacon’ (2021).
Porter recalls his teenage fascination with Bacon’s paintings, asking: “When I re-encounter these images, are they the same Bacon I met when I was 15 in London? The same Bacon I am eating today in Denmark?”
Porter explores the materiality and sensory dimensions of Bacon’s studio, evoking its textures and smells: “It’s so odd to look at pictures like this and not smell turpentine and mint and cigarettes and stale champagne and cum and blood and the sounds of London traffic in the 1960s.” He also contemplates the eerie presence of the paintings behind glass: “It’s so important for Bacon, I think, to look at it and see yourself reflected in this.”
Linking Bacon’s unsettling imagery to contemporary horrors, Porter reflects on the violence of the modern world: “I think about these images coming out of Gaza at the moment—of these children with no heads—and what does it mean to look at an image of a child with no head in the morning and go about your day?”
Max Porter (b. 1981, England) is a renowned British author known for his experimental and poetic prose. His debut novel, ‘Grief Is the Thing with Feathers’ (2015), won the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the 2017 Europese Literatuurprijs. His subsequent works, including ‘Lanny’ (2019) and ‘Shy’ (2023), have further established him as one of the most distinctive literary voices of his generation. In 2021, Max Porter published the ‘The Death of Francis Bacon’. It is a short, poetic novel that imagines the final days and hallucinations of Francis Bacon.
Francis Bacon (1909-1992) was a British, Irish-born figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery. Bacon is considered among the most important painters of the 20th century. For more see: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/bacon-francis/life-and-legacy/
Max Porter reads excerpts from his novel ‘The Death of Francis Bacon, 2021’
Peter Adolphsen interviewed Max Porter in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, in August 2024.
Camera & Edit: Jarl Kaldan Therkildsen
Produced by Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2025
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2025. Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet and C.L. Davids Fond og Samling.
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