Three Studies for Self-Portrait

Francis Bacon

1979 · Oil on canvas · Modern and Contemporary Art

As Bacon remarked to British art critic David Sylvester in 1975, "I loathe my own face . . . I’ve done a lot of self-portraits, really because people have been dying around me like flies and I’ve nobody else left to paint but myself." This striking triptych, featuring a head emerging from a deep abyss of black paint, provides no sense of the space inhabited by the sitter. The tightly constricted view allows only for ruminations on the face itself—its ravages, its psychological depths—and the sense of the head turning around slowly, going from one frame to the next, as if in an unhurried panning shot.

Artist

Francis Bacon

Date

1979

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998