Francis Bacon's tortured figures might allude to more than his own conflicted psyche. In a book that will be published by Tate later this month, Martin Hammer suggests that the British painter also drew heavily on Nazi photographs found in books and magazines after the war.
It's a radical new reading of Bacon's oeuvre. Hammer, a professor of history and philosophy of art at the University of Kent, told The Independent: “The use of Nazi imagery in Bacon's work was an important aspect of his creativity; it is present in many works. It was something that hadn't been addressed.”
The professor is also quick to acknowledge that his findings might not be unanimously well received by Bacon scholars: “The visual evidence is compelling, but it's hard to know what to make of it,” he said. “It's open to interpretation.”
Hammer first noticed the visual affinities between some of Bacon's paintings and Nazi photographs at Tate's 2008 retrospective of the artist's works. His subsequent research led him to the conclusion that it was “a consistent feature of Bacon's work from the 50s and 60s.”
Several of Bacon's “source” photographs were shot by Heinrich Hoffmann, a photographer belonging to Hitler's entourage. According to the art historian, the artist worked on these images for more than two decades, increasingly submerging the Nazi references.
“Bacon started working with this imagery, looking at the true nature of the regime that had emerged,” said Hammer. “He used it to explore the instinctive, savage, bestial nature that was dominating everyone's lives.”
This article also appears on ARTINFO UK.