The violent focus of Francis Bacon

otherlife.co

55 points·exolymph··6 comments

Francis Bacon’s Frightening Beauty - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27252557 - May 2021 (36 comments)

Sacred Monster - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27171624 - May 2021 (3 comments)

Francis Bacon: Revelations review – a landmark biography - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26290955 - Feb 2021 (7 comments)

I don’t agree with many of the conclusions drawn by the author. Just because Francis Bacon saw success by making his life about nothing but his art, doesn’t mean it’s to be done. I’d argue that for most of us, it’s the things you do when you’re away from your canvas/instrument/keyboard that inform your art.

I do agree that there are many distractions in this modern age that take away one’s artistic mojo so to speak but that’s hardly a novel observation.

What really helped my productivity on creative projects is replacing idle-scrolling and other distractions with following my curiosity. I get just as much dopamine from both so it's a perfect replacement

What does this mean in a practical sense, could you expand?

This is the artist from the 1900s not the philosopher from the late 1500s

when the 20th century artist, Francis Bacon, is the topic, most of your a priori knowledge of Francis Bacon is not power.

"ipsa scientia potestas est" ["knowledge itself is power"] - Francis Bacon, Meditationes Sacrae 1597

in the past few days there was one of the periodic flurries of interest in Francis Bacon on reddit, stimulated I think by the reappearance of the user franceisbacon and I can't help but think that led to this topic showing up here when it did, also a periodic showing.

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