Self-Portrait 1973

This small, intense self-portrait was painted by Francis Bacon, using oil on canvas. The painting is mostly dark, but the brushstrokes are smeared and swiped across the surface, and you can imagine him, almost desperately, trying to pin down his own likeness. I always feel such sympathy for an artist making a portrait—especially a self-portrait! Bacon is pushing and pulling the paint, and he’s got that dark background, like he’s trying to capture something elusive from the darkness. It's all pinks, purples, and fleshy tones. See how the paint is built up in layers, thick in some places and thin in others, almost like he's trying to sculpt his own face? That smear of white across the eye—it’s so loaded. Is it avoidance? Insight? I look at it and feel like it's part of a bigger conversation that Bacon's having with artists like Picasso and Giacometti, all wrestling with similar questions about the human condition. Ultimately, it makes me think about how painting is a way of exploring our own messy, contradictory selves, always searching, never quite arriving.