ABSTRACT
The naked floorboards, curtainless windows and unshaded lightbulbs were exactly the same, and no record price at auction was going to persuade Bacon to soften their harshness; it was as if any 'home comfort' were incompatible in the artist's mind with the discipline of painting. Bacon's conversation was rarely more brilliant and to the point than when he had just finished working in the studio. He had been alone all day, prompting the chance effects of oil paint and struggling with their infinite unpredictability, and now he eagerly anticipated the moment when he could lose himself in the pleasures of the night. The guest would stand ankle-deep in the 'carpet' of visual tools and materials that lay underfoot while the artist went up to the image on the easel, shrouded in a sheet in the best nineteenth-century studio tradition, and without more ado unveiled it.
