This is the French edition of the catalogue of the exhibition Picasso Bacon - La vie des Images.
It’s under the shock of Picasso’s exhibition at the Paul Rosenberg gallery in Paris that Francis Bacon started painting in 1927. Since then, he never stopped having multiform relationships with Picasso’s work.
The plastic, thematic and philosophical dimension of this virtual dialogue appeared particularly in this “brutality of fact” that linked, according to Bacon’s own words, his work to Picasso’s.
For the first time, the Picasso museum gathered the key masterpieces that show the fascination and impact of the Catalan master on the great English painter.
The reference catalogue published at this occasion permits the confrontation of the artists’ work from their common big themes: crucifixion, embrace, scream or self-portraits in the study. The pictographic and iconographic procedures shared by Picasso and Bacon, mixing popular imaging and high culture, are particularly analysed, in the light, among others, of Francis Bacon’s archives about Picasso, given to the State by Barry Joule. This way, we can measure the role played by Picasso in Bacon’s “imaginary museum”. Bacon used to collect his photographical portraits and works, and sometimes submitted them to strange appropriation rituals.
