Painter Francis Bacon Quotes

You always have to go too far to get anywhere at all, in art or life.

Worse still, ‘originality’ – rather than consequence – has become the test of genius. The fact that something is ‘original’ – meaning novel, makes it praise-worthy. In fact, originality has now become indistinguishable from mere changes of fashion. In previous eras, there was not a special status given to novelty as an aspect of high quality work – but since about 1800 in the West there has been: greatness is supposedly mostly a matter of being innovative. Yet while great geniuses may innovate this is not the rule, for instance Gluck and J.C. Bach were greater innovators, but much lesser composers than, J.S. Bach and Mozart; Constable and Gainsborough were less original, but higher quality, painters than Francis Bacon or Lucien Freud.

When a friend told Francis Bacon that he would prefer not to have an eternal soul than to live in eternal torment, the painter replied with a grim realism that people are “so attracted to their egos that they’d probably rather have the torment than simple annihilation.

Sir Francis Bacon was one of the most all-round clever people who has ever lived. He did more different things than most of us can dream of. He was an English statesman, philosopher and Irish painter, who lived at the time of Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II. He not only became Lord Chancellor in 1618, but still found time to write one of the first science books in 1620, and, after a short rest, painted the painting Three Studies For Figures At The Base Of The Crucifixion in 1944. Some people believe he had a hand in writing Shakespeare’s plays, and his portrait of Lucien Freud, painted in 1969, when he was 408 years old and drunk, is one of the most expensive ever sold. He did so many things that he is one of the few historical English/Irish figures to require two completely different and contradictory Wikipedia pages.

Like Edwards, many of the best Renaissance thinkers were blessed with a jack-of-all-trades erudition. When he wasn’t revolutionizing astronomy, Copernicus practiced medicine and law. Johannes Kepler based his theory of planetary motion on the ebb and flow of musical harmony. Better known in his day as a lawyer, statesman, writer, and courtier, Francis Bacon helped to pioneer the scientific method. A theologian named Robert Boyle laid the foundations of modern chemistry. Leonardo da Vinci, the poster boy for polymaths, was a gifted painter, sculptor, musician, anatomist, and writer, as well as a startlingly prolific inventor.