How Bacon Boldly Thieved | Craig Raine | New Statesman | 21st May 2016

PG-rated discussion of Francis Bacon’s paintings. “There are two paintings from the Man in Blue 1954 suite in which the faces are poised between the conventionally realistic and the faintly unfocused. In V the posture is listening. He isn’t screaming. His face is recognisable but hard to describe, like a model in wax, just this side of melting. There is no cage of lines. That function is performed by the lines of the table and the sequence of pleated drapes behind the sitter’s head”