From Interviews with Francis Bacon
DS David Sylvester – FB Francis Bacon
Pg 14
About Three Studies for a Crucifixion 1962
FB The figure on the right is something I have wanted to do for a long time. You know the great Cimabue Crucifixion? I always think of that as an image – as a worm crawling down the cross. I did try to make something of the feeling which I’ve sometimes had from that picture of this image just moving, undulating down the cross.
DS And of course this (right hand panel of Three Studies for a Crucifixion 1962) is one of a number of existing images you’ve used.
FB Yes, they breed other images for me. And of course one’s always hoping to renew them.
DS…can you generalise about how far you foresee these transformations of existing images before you begin a canvas and how far they happen in the course of painting?
FB You know in the case of all my painting – and the older I get, the more it becomes so – is accident. So I foresee it in my mind, I foresee it, and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint.
Interviews with Francis Bacon
By David Sylvester
Thames and Hudson
Reprinted 2008
