Sotheby’s to sell rare double self-portrait by Francis Bacon

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/20/francis-bacon-self-portrait-sothebys

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One of the most startlingly bleak self-portraits of the last century, in which a self-loathing Francis Bacon depicts himself in the deepest pits of despair, is to be a highlight of next month’s big-money London auction sales.

Sotheby’s has announced it is to sell a rare double self-portrait by an artist whose work last year set a new world record price for art at auction.

Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s deputy chairman in Europe, said it was the outstanding highlight of its contemporary art sale on 10 February.

Barker called it “a startling painting from one of the greatest 20th century self-portrait artists.” He added: “It is a picture that has got everything. It is a wonderfully fulfilling professional moment in his career but at the same time it is one of total self-reflection, almost self-loathing.”

Two Studies for Self-Portrait was painted in 1977 when Bacon was 68 and reflects his inner emotional turmoil. Everything bad appears to have been on his mind, including the suicide of his friend John Minton in 1957, the death of his decade-long lover Peter Lacy in 1962 and in 1971, the death of his mother Winnie and the suicide of his lover George Dyer on the eve of probably the most important show of Bacon’s life – a retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris.

In an interview with the art critic David Sylvester, Bacon summed up his state of mind at the time: “people have been dying around me like flies and I’ve had nobody else to paint but myself … I loathe my own face. One of the nicest things that Cocteau said was ‘Each day in the mirror I watch death at work.’ This is what one does to oneself.”

Bacon only made three self-portrait diptychs in this format and this is the only one to appear at auction.

It is an incredibly rare thing, said Barker, and you, the viewer, end up pondering your own mortality when standing in front of it.

The painting last appeared at auction in 1993 when it was sold by Sotheby’s for £353,500. Today the estimate is £13m-18m, a reflection of the soaring prices for Bacon, and Barker doubts collectors will be put off the work’s bleakness.

“I think that the appetite of collectors to own what would previously be perceived as difficult pictures is far more receptive. They are no longer after the transient and decorative in their collecting, they are really after the challenging and profound.”

Bacon is one of the most coveted of all 20th century painters for super-rich collectors with his Three Studies of Lucian Freud breaking auction records when it sold for $142.4m at Christie’s in New York.