Francis Bacon: Revelations
Mark Stevens & Annalyn Swan
AVAILABLE in bookstores NOW
Francis Bacon flung open the doors of the twentieth-century closet, becoming one of the great artists, iconoclasts, and bon vivants of the time. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of de Kooning: An American Master comes the first comprehensive look at this Wildean figure whose exploits seem as unforgettable as his painting.
Ten years in the making: FRANCIS BACON: REVELATIONS
THE TIMES OF LONDON ART BOOK OF THE YEAR
UK Edition
Francis Bacon: Revelations
Available now
Hardcover: 870 pages (705 of text)
Also in eBook and audiobook formats
UK Publisher: HarperCollins
Over 100 black-and-white photographs and 37 paintings and triptychs reproduced in full-color art folios
US Edition
Francis Bacon: Revelations
Available Now
Hardcover: 870 pages (705 of text)
Also in eBook format
US Publisher: Knopf
Over 100 black-and-white photographs and 37 paintings and triptychs reproduced in full-color art folios
#1 Amazon Bestseller in the U.K. in Contemporary Art
HENI TALKS: FRANCIS BACON: REVELATIONS
MARK STEVENS & ANNALYN SWAN IN CONVERSATION WITH ROB STORR
To view the full video interview, please visit “HENI TALKS: Francis Bacon: Revelations” on YouTube.
The Book
“[A] mesmerizing portrait of a performer commanding the stage of the 20th century…. This is not a portrait of a myth. It is the story of a man. And when it comes to the figure of Francis Bacon, a biography that can make manifest this intrinsic paradox must surely count as definitive.”
Francis Bacon at a glittering dinner for his 1971 show at the Grand Palais in Paris
Francis Bacon, Three Studies of Lucian Freud (detail), left panel of triptych, 1969
Francis Bacon played an outsized role in both the art — and the life — of his time. In the studio, he captured the shadows of a dark century. After work, he swashbuckled through London’s Soho, a witty free spirit and unabashed homosexual during a period when many contemporaries remained closeted.
And yet, as this new biography by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan reveals, Bacon was a far more varied, nuanced, and surprising figure than the celebrated persona suggests.
The Authors
Mark Stevens & Annalyn Swan
Mark Stevens has been the art critic of Newsweek, The New Republic, and New York Magazine and has also written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and The New York Times.
Annalyn Swan is the former arts editor of Newsweek and an award-winning music critic. She teaches biographical writing at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York as well as at Middlebury Breadloaf School of English.
Their previous book, de Kooning: An American Master, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Biography among other honors and awards.
Photo: Elena Seibert, 2020
“To read [this] book is to spend hours in the company of the most interesting of men, ever on the threshold of moments when mere interest dissolves into hot, stammering creative bliss.”
